Mickey Rourke's Quotes

What I've got to do now is let them judge me for who I am as an actor and not for my notoriety.

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.

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.

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.

Winning an Oscar ain't about performance. There's a lot of politics involved.

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

You know, back in acting school they always teach you, 'Make bold choices and look for activities that are interesting.'

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

I don't have many Hollywood friends anyway; I thought with my ability I didn't need to make those kind of relationships, but maybe I should have done. Might have made my life easier!

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 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 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.

In Hollywood, you're always playing roles... It's like going through the motions. But in real life, it's like, you gotta take care of business. It's not just the movies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

Comeback is a good word, man.

I did think for many, many years that because of my ability I could beat the system. And I was wrong.

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.

A lot of those who let you down are those who seemed the closest to you.

A reputation is really hard to live down.

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.

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

Being out of work for 13 to 15 years is no walk in the park.

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

Hollywood's famous for putting you in a box.

I always knew I'd accomplish something very special - like robbing a bank perhaps.

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 don't care what Tom Cruise says about therapy.

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.

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

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.

I love the first Godfather movie, part one. And two.

I loved my mother, but I don't like her.

I never knew my father, and I'd hate to repeat that kind of cycle with my own children, because I'd also want to be there for them no matter what.

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

I spent a lot of years trying to beat the system and, in the end, the system kicked my behind good.

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.