Mickey Rourke
The hardest thing in life to do is to change.Collection: Change
It's no fun being a loser. Trust me.Collection: Trust
Mitch Glazer and I went to high school together, and his mother was my English teacher for two years. She was my favorite teacher, and I followed Mitch's career as a journalist, so we've kind of kept in touch over the years.Collection: Teacher
Winning an Oscar ain't about performance. There's a lot of politics involved.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: Movies
Sometimes, when a man is alone, that's all you got is your dog.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Computers
I had a lot of anger inside me and that came out at times that were not particularly advantageous to me career-wise.Collection: Anger
Comeback is a good word, man.
Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.
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 loved my mother, but I don't like her.
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.
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.'
I don't care what Tom Cruise says about therapy.
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.
People are always afraid of the truth.
As time goes by and you're getting older and stuff like that - getting older sucks. You know, I hear all this crap about, 'Oh, you can age with dignity.' Really?
I was very immature when I was young, and for me there was no balance. Everything was just all or nothing.
I never look backwards. I have always been an athlete. I boxed before I acted.
I'm only as rich as my next film.
I always knew I'd accomplish something very special - like robbing a bank perhaps.
A lot of the stuff I am now seeing is edgy, raw kinda material.
It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
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.
It was either therapy or die.
I did think for many, many years that because of my ability I could beat the system. And I was wrong.
What I've got to do now is let them judge me for who I am as an actor and not for my notoriety.
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.
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.
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 started to shortcircuit because I had high aspirations for the film. I never told anybody that.
I had some things I had to fix. It took me 14 years to do it. But it was never really fun back in the day to work with directors who were a lot older and were like authoritarian and talking to you like that.
All that prosthetic makeup drains you. By the time it's lunch, you're done.
All I am hoping for is to be able to work - I think my best work is still ahead of me - I think all that I have been through in the last several years have only made me a better, more interesting actor.
I started out fighting before I was acting, actually, then got hurt and got into the acting.
I have a really good relationship with a lot of designers. I like Gaultier, Billionaire and Cavalli.
I'm not gonna rush out and see the next 'Batman;' I'm not big on formula movies.
A lot of those who let you down are those who seemed the closest to you.
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 still work out most days. When I do it, I go full blast five or six days a week, two to three hours a day. I enjoy it. It's therapeutic for me.
Evan Rachel Wood is the best actress I've ever worked with, hands down.
To me, everything's competition.
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.
Acting was never my first choice as a profession, but I came to terms with it when I decided I better buckle down and be the best I can be at it.
Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy.
Hollywood's famous for putting you in a box.
In boxing, you don't know what's going to happen. In wrestling, it's already prearranged.
You know, back in acting school they always teach you, 'Make bold choices and look for activities that are interesting.'
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.