When I first met Alan Parker, who directed 'Angel Heart,' he'd heard so many horror stories about me that he was literally scared to death of me. Right away, he sat me down and said, 'I'm very scared of you. I've heard you're a very bad boy.'
Mickey Rourke
The hardest thing in life to do is to change.
It's no fun being a loser. Trust me.
Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.
When you lose everything, and I mean everything, you sit there in this empty room in the dark, and the only person who can get you out is you.
Wrestling and boxing is like Ping-Pong and rugby. There's no connection.
Where I come from, being a hard man is being able to take a good beating and then get back up again and carry on fighting.
I spent so long studying really hard to become a fine actor, but threw it all away because I got the adulation and the fame so easily.
Sometimes the independent movies can get a little too arty-farty. You watch the IFC Channel and you want to throw up. You don't always have to take things so serious, you know.
I did think for many, many years that because of my ability I could beat the system. And I was wrong.
I started out fighting before I was acting, actually, then got hurt and got into the acting.
I never look backwards. I have always been an athlete. I boxed before I acted.
I used to love playing football in high school. I played with the same guys for 10 years.
I had a lot of anger inside me and that came out at times that were not particularly advantageous to me career-wise.
I have a really good relationship with a lot of designers. I like Gaultier, Billionaire and Cavalli.
People need medicine and they need therapists.
I spent a lot of years trying to beat the system and, in the end, the system kicked my behind good.
I was very immature when I was young, and for me there was no balance. Everything was just all or nothing.
People are always afraid of the truth.
I always knew I'd accomplish something very special - like robbing a bank perhaps.
I love the first Godfather movie, part one. And two.
A reputation is really hard to live down.
Once you've been somebody, really, you have a career and you're a nobody anymore, and you're getting older, you're living what's called a state of shame.
I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.
I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.
Bounty hunters these days - because everything is so sophisticated with computers and surveillance, it doesn't have to be a one-man-army-type guy who goes in and kicks a door down.
I'm not gonna rush out and see the next 'Batman;' I'm not big on formula movies.
Hollywood's famous for putting you in a box.
You know, back in acting school they always teach you, 'Make bold choices and look for activities that are interesting.'
Very few men can fall as far as I have and come back. People see me and it's like they've seen a ghost, like I'm back from the dead.
I don't care what Tom Cruise says about therapy.
Sometimes, when a man is alone, that's all you got is your dog.
When you're young, working in a warehouse or selling hot dogs, you look at work - at acting - as something precious. It gets you out of the stink.
Comeback is a good word, man.
It was either therapy or die.
I trained like an animal, but the thing is focus and concentration. When the bell rings it's like when the little red light goes on over the camera. And I can usually nail my lines on the first or second take because I'm right there.
The acclaim I'm getting for 'The Wrestler' means everything in the world to me. But it also means I can't take my foot off the gas pedal.
A lot of the stuff I am now seeing is edgy, raw kinda material.
I started to shortcircuit because I had high aspirations for the film. I never told anybody that.
I didn't have a childhood, really, because I worked my whole life and... other reasons. So when I had some success, I went ballistic. That was my childhood, and the party kept going on.
There's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up.
I try to find the right director who won't compromise his or anyone else's integrity, and yet be political enough to give the studio what they want, yet put up a fight to maintain that integrity.
You can be mediocre, the way most actors are, and you can still be a top movie star, even if your movies are boring and predictable. All you have to do is know how to sell yourself, let yourself be manufactured.
In boxing, you don't know what's going to happen. In wrestling, it's already prearranged.
It was the most fun I've ever had on a movie. It was one of the happiest times in my life. I was living in New York, and I really enjoyed acting at the time. Also, it's funny because that was also the time when I went downhill.
I don't mind getting punched in the nose by a guy standing in front of me. It's getting stabbed in the back that I can't handle.
All that prosthetic makeup drains you. By the time it's lunch, you're done.
It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
Years ago I realized that maybe I made mistake, politically, when I turned a lot of that stuff down. I would go off to obscure places and make movies that six people went to see.
A couple of guys won Academy Awards for the things that I turned down. Today, after coming to terms with everything, after being in therapy for a long time-there are areas where I will compromise.
