Kim Basinger Reveals Truth Behind Rumors She Feuded With ‘9 1/2 Weeks’ Costar Mickey Rourke

9 1/2 WEEKS, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, 1986 — Everett Collection

In an in-depth new interview with Variety, film icon Kim Basinger dug deep into her life and legacy — including long-standing rumors that she and Mickey Rourke feuded on the set of her 1986 breakthrough film, the controversial erotic thriller 9 1/2 Weeks.

Basinger, 71, revealed that because she asked director Adrian Lyne — who she described herself as having a “love-hate” relationship with, though she ultimately “was very crazy about him” — to shoot the film chronologically, and she didn’t meet Rourke before coming to set.

“I wanted to meet Mickey Rourke in that grocery store [depicted in the film],” Basinger told Variety. “I did not want to say hello to him before. I didn’t want to talk to him on the set. It had nothing to do with all the stuff you read on the internet about he and I hating each other. I loved him. He’s a brilliant actor too. But when I met him for the first time, it was on film. And I never saw him any other time.”

Shortly after the film’s initial release, stories began to swirl that shooting the film, which follows a young art gallery owner as she becomes involved in a complex sadomasochistic sexual relationship with a Wall Street banker, took a severe emotional toll on Basinger. A March 1986 New York Times article entitled “HOW ‘9 1/2 WEEKS’ PUSHED AN ACTRESS TO THE EDGE” noted that director Lyne “tried to create to some degree an atmosphere on the set — and in particular a relationship between the two stars — that would push Miss Basinger into actually experiencing some of the feelings and playing them out in raw form before the cameras.”

The article concludes that “The experience, Miss Basinger said afterward, was traumatic for her and even created some problems for a while in her marriage to Ron Britton, a former movie makeup man, now a painter. She does concede, however, that the experience helped her to grow as an actress and was a kind of exorcism that liberated her for new roles.”

In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lyne revealed some of the very controversial techniques he used to elicit reactions from Basinger on set: “Because it was shot roughly in continuity, I thought it was interesting to let the relationship build on film. It wasn’t manipulation; it was just to try to help. There was a scene where he’s testing her — it got cut — and he wants her to take pills, essentially die for him. She doesn’t know the pills are sugar. We started to shoot it, and she just looked too fresh. So I spoke to Mickey and said, ‘We’ve got to do something to break her down.’ So he grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go. She became angry then tearful. In the back of her mind, I’m sure she knew that it was to help her. And then she was marvelous.”

FIFTY SHADES DARKER, Kim Basinger, 2017.

Doane Gregory/©Universal Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

Despite what she was put through on set, the film failed at the box office, though it later became a cult classic. Basinger went on to a celebrated career that included hit films from The Natural to Batman to L.A. Confidential, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Her last filmed role was in 2017’s Fifty Shades Darker, but Basinger told Variety that she was not retired, but simply “very picky” and that she receives “a lot of bad material.”

Read the full interview here.