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.

The two sports are as different as Ping-Pong and rugby. In boxing, you don’t know what’s going to happen. In wrestling, it’s already prearranged. But the thing I didn’t know about wrestling is that you really get hurt. Because, you know, you’re wrestling in front of a live audience, and you end up doing things like jumps or slams, and 40 percent of the time you don’t land right.

It was either therapy or die.

Julian Schnabel painted a picture that he dedicated to my character in Rumble Fish. It was called The Motorcycle Boy. I remember when he brought it over to me at the Mayflower Hotel [in New York] years ago. This is when you and I knew each other.

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

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 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