Mickey Rourke details childhood abuse, criticizes Tom Cruise in Piers Morgan interview

Mickey Rourke was 14 years old when he "chose to get hard" to endure an abusive childhood, the actor is revealing in an emotional new interview.

The "Sin City" star opened up on Monday's episode of "Piers Morgan Uncensored" about the "violent" upbringing he experienced, saying the actions he took were necessary to survive.

Rourke told Morgan the abuse "happened when I was about 14" and he made a "choice."

"There comes a time … when you're living in shame. That's it. There's nothing worse than that. So you got two choices: You either live in shame, and you will become like a broken soul a broken person, or you get hard and I chose to get hard. Not by choice, just by survival," Rourke said.

He added that as the years passed, he "messed everything up that I tried to accomplish," and he takes the blame for it.

"By me getting hard with everything and everybody alienated me from people… I became, as my therapist told me, a scary person to deal with and I didn't know how to turn the off switch off," Rourke, 69, said.

Rourke said it was in his 23 years of therapy where he realized the grave power dynamics that had impacted his career, saying he dealt with people who came "from an authoritarian place." Those people included "producers," who Rourke said can "treat you a certain way because they're the ones with the money and the power," though he said he did not care about their influence.

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“People who have money and power … (feel) they can treat you a certain way. But I made a decision a long time ago, when I was 14, that I gotta be a man and I had to be a man at 14," Rourke said. "As the years went by, even with the success and the destruction of my career, it was always important for me - because of where I came from - to be a man first and an actor second.”

Rourke credits actors such as Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, and Marlon Brando, among others, as "the kind of actor" he wants to be like: "A lot of guys who tried to stretch as actors."

One person "The Wrestler" actor won't list is "Top Gun" star Tom Cruise, who reprised his role as Pete Mitchell in "Top Gun: Maverick," which soared in the box office this summer with earnings over $1.18 billion worldwide.

Rourke said that the film's success "doesn't mean (anything)" to him and that Cruise remains "irrelevant" in his world.

“(Cruise has) been doing the same part" for 35 years, Rourke said. "I got no respect for that. I don’t care about money or power."

Though he hasn't graced the silver screen in a decade, Rourke is confident in his talents.

“I've got enough ability and I've got more ability than most actors that are walking around, and if I could just behave myself, there's a lot of young up and coming directors that aren't afraid of how I used to be perceived," Rourke said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mickey Rourke labels Tom Cruise 'irrelevant,' details childhood abuse