Evan Rachel Wood Feels ‘Disrespected’ By Tongue-Wrestling Partner Mickey Rourke

Doing publicity for Mickey Rourke is like being a firefighter: when one, Wrestlemania-related conflagration is put out, suddenly a costar starts spouting flames.

Rourke’s Wrestler daughter/potential lover Evan Rachel Wood has something to get off her chest, and so she talked to Rolling Stone blogger Austin Scaggs, who, SIDENOTE, you really must read Austin Scaggs’s introduction to this story, in which he brags that Wood is his BFF because they were briefly introduced once two years ago when Scaggs was assigned to interview Marilyn Manson. He hasn’t seen her since that night, but still! Besties. Anyway, here is what Scaggs had to say about Wood:

With no other friend in the press to turn to, we heard from Evan this morning. She has been so distraught by these rumours, and the attention they have taken away from the brilliant movie, that she asked us to pass along this message. And we obliged.

“I’m upset because I feel disrespected by the press and by Mr. Rourke,” she told us. “Just because I’m single doesn’t mean that you can take advantage of me. It’s unfair that the performances might suffer because of all of these distractions.”

And regarding her alleged affair with Mr. Rourke, Wood says, “I’m not attracted to him, he’s too old for me. Nothing ever happened and nothing ever will.”

What exactly did Rourke do to “disrespect” Wood? Did she fall to a distant fourth in the Oscar companion sweepstakes that includes Bai Ling, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and a chihuahua? Or, when told that Wood would be making her Broadway debut opposite Spider-Man, did Rourke blithely mutter, “That fag?”

• Evan Rachel Wood Clears Up the Rumours In the S.S. [Rolling Stone]