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.

By the end of the shoot [of Wrestler], my trainer was pushing me up three flights of stairs to my house and holding my arm like I was an old cripple. I had three MRIs in the first two months of working on the film. I felt like it really was over by the time we started shooting the movie.

I had gotten injured during the boxing, and I was supposed to take several months off because I'd had a couple of concussions, and so I sort of just left the boxing and got into the acting by accident.

Wrestlers are all pretty busted-up by the ends of their careers.

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

I thought my talent would transcend my outspokenness. I was wrong.