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.

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 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 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.

It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

Comeback is a good word, man.

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

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

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

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

It was either therapy or die.

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

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.

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.

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

Hollywood's famous for putting you in a box.

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 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 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 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 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.

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

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.

I'm not gonna rush out and see the next 'Batman;' I'm not big on formula movies.

It's no fun being a loser. Trust me.

My dogs are more important than my family.

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.

People are always afraid of the truth.

People need medicine and they need therapists.

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

Sometimes, when a man is alone, that's all you got is your dog.

The hardest thing in life to do is to change.

To me, everything's competition.