In Britain, eponymous lifestyle branding as we know it started in the late 1960s, with two fascinating families - the Conrans and the Ashleys - who in increasingly brilliant settings and catalogues sold rather different visions of what the new ideal upper-middle-y life looked like.
When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
I had done some work when I was starting in with photography on westerns, and photographing them was the greatest pleasure I had. If I was ever qualified for anything, it would have had to do with making westerns. But as I started working on pictures with people like Katharine Hepburn, I got further away from the thing I really liked to do.
I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.
I started spending time at stables with my daughter while she was riding. I was reminded of my love for the form and different aspects of the horse. Then I thought about the bit, halter, and bridle in terms of how we harness and ride this animal. There were a lot of interesting elements to explore.
I've been an 'Office' fan from day one. I knew Steve Carell in Chicago back in the day, so I started watching to support a Chicago guy and immediately got hooked on that show.
That's where it all started for me, in clubs and bars, and I don't ever wanna outgrow that.
When I began playing around at being a physical chemist, I enjoyed very much doing work on the structure of DNA molecules, something which I would never have dreamed of doing before I started.
Net-neutrality proponents howled when Comcast started throttling traffic from BitTorrent, a bandwidth-hogging program people use to swap video files. The Federal Communications Commission sided with the open-Internet folks, ruling that Comcast could not selectively choke off traffic.
I started photographing amazing African wildlife for my own pleasure. It was like a much-needed antidote to my life in the city, which I was fast becoming allergic to.
I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places.
In the 2000s, I became an artist. I started preserving and educating. I became more obsessed with making iPod playlists for people.
I always looked up to great actors and great films. A lot of my family would be like, 'Come on, you should get into these plays that are going on.' I'm like, 'Nah, nah, music's my thing.' I just fell into it. I moved to Atlanta, got with an agency out there, started doing little voiceover commercials, and it started getting kind of fun.
I had a ukulele when I was about seven. Then I started playing around with the mandolin and the banjo.
In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years, I did nothing else. Every holiday, I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don't need a long beard or a sari. It's meant to bring you to yourself. It's as easy as that.
I always thought Broadway's the goal, and then I moved out to L.A. with 'Wicked' and started doing guest-star spots and little recurring things, and I was like, 'Well, this is pretty great; I'm kind of digging this.'
When I first started, there really was no beauty guru community. I didn't have the right production resources. I had to learn how to edit. I didn't even have beauty products. I had to go out and buy them myself because beauty brands didn't even know what a beauty guru was.
I had an opportunity to play baseball in college, but I just didn't want to go to school. I started focusing on my music and it was game over!
I found myself drawn to the remote Kimberley region of Australia - in the far Northwest corner of the country - our last frontier. I still can't explain why. I kept coming back over many years and started shooting material.
'Despacito' started with a melody hook that I had with my guitar only. The beat for this track came after I wrote the lyrics, which I wrote as if I was writing a ballad.
It would be great if people returned to areas of the country that need talented people with good economic prospects. Our country would really benefit if those who went to elite universities, who started businesses, who started nonprofits, weren't just doing so on the coasts.
I only started uploading on YouTube because I was having trouble one day uploading a video on my blog.
I haven't made anything I don't believe in. I've always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I'm a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I'm feeling good about.
No actor in the world started off at the top.
I just started the way most comics start, doing open mic shows around Sacramento and San Francisco, and eventually, I moved to L.A. After about four or five years in L.A., I got the call to join the 'The Daily Show.'
When the band first started, it was so much about carving out some space for myself and our audience and our songs.
Insecurity is very common among actors. When I started giving interviews and talking to people that I didn't know, it was a nightmare. I've learned how to deal with interviews and insecurity; I've gotten used to it.
I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on 'Keene at Noon.'
I did voice work for many years before I started having success as an actress. It was mostly radio and television voiceover work, but I know my way around the studio. I know how to use the cappuccino machines and the headphones.
When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.
I started doing standup when I was in college, and I would incorporate a lot of characters into my act.
Part of the delight of my garden is that you just get lost in it before you've even started to do anything.
I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered that there was this World's Fair thing in the background. I thought, 'I'll read about the fair.' I had nothing better to do. I'd dismissed about a dozen ideas, and I was getting sort of antsy. I started reading, and that's where I got hooked.
I took some voice lessons here and there as a teenager but nothing too serious. I started taking it more seriously when I was in Miss Saigon. I needed to improve my technique in order to survive doing that show as many time a week as I was doing it. It's not an easy show to sing, so I needed all the help I could get.
I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.
I started with the Target Company in 1993 when their Christmas theme that year was 'It's A Wonderful Life,' and they reunited the actors who played the Bailey kids. So we went all over and really had a blast getting the love from all of the fans and thought, 'Whoopty-doo, there's something going on here.'
