John Travolta might have made a mistake when he decided to turn down 'Forrest Gump,' but he got it absolutely right when Quentin Tarantino offered his flagging movie career a shot in the arm with 'Pulp Fiction.' He wasn't the only (at the time) faded star on Tarantino's wish-list though - he also threw a lifeline out to Mickey Rourke. Rourke, for reasons best known to himself, decided not to catch it.
It wasn't Travolta's part that Rourke was offered - it was the washed-up boxer Butch, who was eventually portrayed on-screen by Bruce Willis. As a mostly-failed boxer himself, perhaps Rourke felt it was just a little too close to home. It would be over a decade before he eventually got his career back on track with 'The Wrestler,' so maybe he should have just accepted that broken-down sportsmen were the right way to go for him at the first time of asking.