I was a Marvel guy. I started reading comics when I was a kid.
I would just randomly blurt out things like, 'What if a man showed up today and was carrying an umbrella, but it wasn't raining?' Eventually, people started to call me weird.
We got involved with the RepRap Project, a community focused on making 3-D printers that could make copies of themselves and help create a world without money. We started making prototypes.
I didn't always want to be a model, but once I started, I realized how much I loved it.
I was in a steak house once, and someone proposed. I was so embarrassed. The woman started crying, and I thought, 'She was just proposed to in a steak house - I'd be crying, too.'
I was probably 15 when I started going to the studio with the older cats in my neighborhood. They heard me rap outside one time; I was just freestyling. And they invited me to the studio. It's good when you're accepted, no matter what crowd. That's the first step of believing you can do whatever you feel like putting your mind to.
I think ever since I started to read, there have been favorite novels for different stages of my life. And one is never bumped out of place to yield to another. Instead, I just add to my favorite shelves.
I started out writings songs for what I thought was going to be a maximum of five people down our local pub.
Since I started CrossFit, I've read and heard about the critics talk about how unsafe it is, and my only response to that is any form of exercise can be unsafe if you don't have the proper coaching, education and guidance.
It seemed like I always did some great hitting in Brooklyn. The field there was close to the stands. Every time I started walking to the plate, I could hear the fans say, 'Here comes that man again. Here comes that man.'
Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over.
I've been performing since I was very little, about three years old. I was inspired at first by the MTV artists of the '80s and started putting on 'shows' in the apartment, most of them set to Michael Jackson's 'Bad' album. In my mind, there was a full lighting rig behind me... but it was just a couch.
When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.
Trees are great. Don't get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how - back when this country was covered in forests - the word for sky was an Old English word that meant 'tops of trees.'
I've been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in '96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.
When I started doing advertisements, I really enjoyed the whole process of shooting, and I realised that I could do the little bit of acting required quite easily. My directors also told me that I have a flair for acting and that I should polish it and try for films. Then I thought I probably had it in me - why not give it a shot?
In 2007, I went to work in Beverly Hills as an intern at The Collective, a talent management agency. I'd been scouted for the job because of a blog I'd started in college and because the blogger-turned-author I worked for, Tucker Max, was producing a project with the company.
I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.
I'm actually a NASA brat. My father was a rocket scientist. He started working at NASA before it was NASA in 1959.
Once I became number one, I started working even harder. I changed my technique, but injuries started creeping in - it was a big mistake, as I was doing something right to get to that spot in the first place.
I just loved going fast. So I started out with Alka-Seltzer and soda water in a bottle and attached it to the skateboard. That didn't do much. I would try a leaf blower. I was searching for anything that would go fast. Then, the lawnmower engine.
I started Shutterstock out of my own need. I'd previously created a few software companies, and each time, I struggled to find affordable images to use on my websites.
When I first started making music, it was where I went when I couldn't express myself, when I wasn't able to connect with other people, when I couldn't talk about what I was going through.
Part of my affinity with urban music comes from being on 'Kids Incorporated,' 'cos we used to sit around and listen to Chaka Khan and Prince, and I got influenced by all that. Then gangsta rap got started, and I was infatuated with that - maybe that's why I'm fascinated by guns.
I started out with piano when I was little. That, for songwriting, is my favorite instrument.
I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.
I'm one of the lucky directors that pretty much every movie I've done has started a franchise. But I never think this way. I think that's the way you break it, if you go, 'then at the end, at the end we'll see you later.' I was forced to do it in 'Clash of the Titans.'
When I started fundraising like me and leading like me, that's when I really started to shine and find my own rhythm.
When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.
When I was 5 years old, we had nothing in the village. One day, in front of my house, some soldiers in a big Cadillac started to do a picnic. I looked at them like they were coming from the moon. I remember they gave me a box of rice pudding - that, for me, was the American Dream.
When I started analysing games in 2001, I had a DVD recorder. I'd be at home watching the games just on a normal TV, watching what I could and trying to figure out what we would be facing a few weeks later. The problem was, in the team meetings, I'd always have to keep going back and forwards with the footage, trying to get to the right part.
I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing.
On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.
I didn't know I wanted to do films until I started to do them. Very few films are made in Mexico and film-making belonged to a very specific group, a clique.
Being interviewed is an odd experience for me because I was an actor a long time before anyone ever asked me a question about myself. When I started being interviewed, I definitely felt I was being asked to defend or explain myself.
When I started out, I wanted to be Billy Joel. The plan was to be a singer-songwriter of that ilk, and, then, I got waylaid - that's probably an unfair way to say it - from being a rock star by the musical theatre stuff, which I love doing.
