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.

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 think the first year and a half that I was in New York I was having trouble just living somewhere. Back in them days the city was a lot different than it is now.

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.

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

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.

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."