U.S. actor Mickey Rourke toured Moscow's overcrowded Butyrka prison to prepare for his upcoming role as a Russian villain in "Iron Man 2," becoming the first person in 35 years to don a tsarist torture device used to keep prisoners awake.

Rourke visited Butyrka on Thursday to get a firsthand view of Russian prison life and inspect the 18th-century "slingshot" sleep-deprivation tool, which was last worn in the 1970s, according to the prison's web site.

Rourke attended the Moscow premiere of "The Wrestler," for which he won a Golden Globe Award for best actor, the previous evening.

Butyrka is the main presentencing facility in Moscow, whose inmates have included the KGB forerunner's founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn and oligarch and former NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky.

Rourke's next role is that of an evildoer named Ivan who goes by the name of Whiplash in "Iron Man 2," a sequel to the blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr.

Rourke inspected the kitchen and asked for a loaf of bread to take away.

"If I ever did time, I would like to work in a bakery, because the smell of fresh bread reminds me of childhood," Rourke said, according to the prison's web site.

Rourke, 55, returned to prominence this year after a decade in cinematic obscurity that included a brief stint in a Miami jail in 2007.

While at Butyrka, Rourke played table tennis with a guard and tried out a prisoner's bed.

"My sofa seems much stiffer," he said.