Quotes from Mickey Rourke

People need medicine and they need therapists.

I behaved worse than anybody for 15 years, and you have to pay the price for that. I used to blame other people, then therapy made me realise I had to change.

It was either therapy or die.

A lot of the stuff I am now seeing is edgy, raw kinda material.

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.

Evan Rachel Wood is the best actress I've ever worked with, hands down.

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.

People ask me about that all the time. They say, "Did you ever think of directing?" And I say, "It's completely out of the question."

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 used to love playing football in high school. I played with the same guys for 10 years.

Some of your worst gangsters are guys who were very low-key.

I don't care what Tom Cruise says about therapy.

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 started out fighting before I was acting, actually, then got hurt and got into the acting.

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

I'd just as soon do a big-budget movie as an independent one.

You want to earn respect in your old age. You want to walk into a restaurant and have people say: 'There's Mickey Rourke. He was great in 'The Wrestler.' You don't want them jumping out of windows.

In boxing, you don't know what's going to happen. In wrestling, it's already prearranged.

Wrestling and boxing is like Ping-Pong and rugby. There's no connection.

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.

A reputation is really hard to live down.

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.

I grew up in a gym in Miami, the one where Muhammad Ali trained. I had 142 amateur fights and lost three.