Mickey Rourke

All that prosthetic makeup drains you. By the time it’s lunch, you’re done.

I never look backwards. I have always been an athlete. I boxed before I acted.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

It was either therapy or die.

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.

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.

I was very immature when I was young, and for me there was no balance. Everything was just all or nothing.

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.

I started to shortcircuit because I had high aspirations for the film. I never told anybody that.

Comeback is a good word, man.

I had a lot of anger inside me and that came out at times that were not particularly advantageous to me career-wise.

I always knew I’d accomplish something very special – like robbing a bank perhaps.