Credit a group of real-life, small-time wrestlers at a Parsippany gym with helping Mickey Rourke get off the canvas of a nearly wrecked career to win a Golden Globe this week as best actor for his performance in "The Wrestler."

The movie takes place in the seamy underworld of small-time professional wrestling, where life is depicted as a series of Saturday night smack downs that regularly send dreams crashing to the canvas.

Critics have praised the film, which opens Friday in North Jersey, as both a realistic portrayal and a real-life comeback for its leading man, the often-troubled Rourke. The actor delivers a heart-breaking performance that is generating serious Oscar buzz. East Coast Professional Wrestling provided many of the wrestlers Rourke grapples with in the film. Its gym, located behind a delicatessen on North Beverwyck Road in the Lake Hiawatha section, also supplied some of the early inspiration for the film’s director, Darren Aronofsky.

"Darren came to see one of our shows at the Wayne Police Athletic League about a year-and-a-half ago," recalled Gino Caruso, the owner and promoter of East Coast Professional Wrestling. "He liked what he saw, then came to me about putting some of our wrestlers in the film."

The director apparently also liked what he saw in the wrestler Andrew Anderson, a so-called "good guy" from Ridgefield who came into the ring that night in Wayne swinging a 16-foot metal chain. And, Aronofsky liked the bad-guy wrestler who goes by the moniker Brolly (real name: George Viera of Elizabeth), a 400-pound behemoth whose day job is a graphic designer. About a half-dozen East Coast wrestlers are in the film.

Anderson, 38, an investment banker with a wife and three children when he isn’t giving body slams, said his role didn’t require much acting in the cinematic sense. He plays one of the many wrestlers that Rourke encounters backstage before a match, where the promoter gathers the athletes and decides what is going to happen in the ring that night.

"This was a great chance for me to just be me," said Anderson, who wrestled for Paramus Catholic in high school and has had over 1,000 professional bouts. "I basically just got to play myself."

The same might be said of Rourke, the former boxer whose acting career began brilliantly in the 1980s with roles in "The Pope of Greenwich Village," "Diner," and "Body Heat." But his antics, both onscreen and off, sent that career plummeting, until "The Wrestler" came along and offered him redemption.

Much of the film’s pre-production took place at the Parsippany gym, as Aronofsky tested lighting and camera angles with East Coast wrestlers in the ring, Caruso said. Some of the wrestling scenes were filmed at the Pioneer Club in Hasbrouck Heights and others at the drafty, seaside arena at Convention Hall in Asbury Park.

The sets form the backdrop of life in a small-time professional wrestling circuit, far from the bright lights and big money of the nationally-syndicated World Wrestling Entertainment run by Vince McMahon. For every Hulk Hogan who makes millions, there are hundreds of wrestlers like Rourke’s character, Randy the Ram, who beat their head against the turnbuckle for $50 on a Saturday night.

"We all want to be on Wrestlemania," Brolly said. "We all want to be the Main Event. But you have to have something that no one else has."

For $3,000, Caruso will train someone who wants to be the next Hulk Hogan. The Lyndhurst native used to wrestle as "Mr. Italy" but gave it up to start East Coast in 1990.

Caruso trains the wrestlers, teaching them how to do the assorted flying dropkicks and body slams safely so they don’t kill themselves. Along with the moves, the school teaches the wrestlers to develop their character in the ring — whether that’s a clean image of a guy like Anderson, who dubs himself "The Reinforcer," or the bad-guy persona of Brolly, who enters the ring with a grab bag of dirty tricks.

"Wrestling is like a Shakespearean drama," Caruso said. "It’s all about the battle between good and evil."

East Coast Professional Wrestling does about 200 shows a year, from Maine to Mississippi and has a Tuesday night show on Bergen County cable. In North Jersey, the shows mostly take place at Elks clubs, VFW halls and high school gymnasiums, and the tickets are cheap — usually about $10.

Many of the wrestlers dream of superstardom, at least in the beginning. But reality soon sets in: It’s a long way to the WWE. Still, the garbage can lids and the blood are real.

"It’s a struggle," said Brolly, who is 29 and has been wrestling professionally for six years. "It’s so hard to catch somebody’s eye. I used to do it to make it big. Now I do it because I like it and I do it well."

Even when done well, though, it extracts a price.

Brolly recently broke his eye socket during a match. Although he finished the match, he has been sidelined recently while he recovers. Anderson tore up his knee just before filming began but managed to recover in time to take his turn on screen.

Anderson says injuries are part of the game and has no intention of getting out of the ring. He was working as a bar bouncer in Cliffside Park 13 years ago when he was spotted by another professional wrestler, Jimmy Snooker, and recruited.

Anderson plans to see the movie, but won’t be able to make it this Friday when the film opens in North Jersey. East Coast Professional Wrestling is holding its annual Hall of Fame dinner at the VFW Hall in Saddle Brook — all you can eat for $25.

"I owe it to Gino for standing behind me," Anderson said. "I’m basically living my dream, thanks to Jimmy Snooker, Gino Caruso and Darren Aronofsky."

Credit a group of real-life, small-time wrestlers at a Parsippany gym with helping Mickey Rourke get off the canvas of a nearly wrecked career to win a Golden Globe this week as best actor for his performance in "The Wrestler."