From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.
I got a lot from my uncle who is a really good ska guitarist. Very ragged makeshift rhythms and intricate lines.
My grandmother, she's been the positive portion of my life the entire time. She raised us Baptist, and when I got old enough to say I didn't want to go to church, she didn't force me. She was cool.
Everybody was on the same page. Nobody has really gone out there on a different musical journey. When we got back together again, we all wanted to do the same kind of music.
I got sober, and I got happy again.
You see I don't like to be really too commercial about things but in this business you've just got to be commercial otherwise the films don't make money and you don't make films and as a long as a commodity is selling it's silly to kill it dead.
What I realized is that the desire for making 'Places' came from the fact that I've got this strange situation with having been born in the glitter, born on the other side of the mirror that everyone fantasizes about.
I was 16. In the middle of the night, I took a taxi to the Detroit train station - or maybe it was the Pontiac train station? - and got on a train to Chicago, then transferred to a train to San Diego where my boyfriend was living at the time.
I chose John Carroll Lynch as my SAG name when I was 19 years old. I was working in D.C., and I got my SAG card by doing a first aid film for the Red Cross called 'Bleeding Control'. They had a union contract.
I moved out to Los Angeles with the idea of becoming a director, which thousands, if not tens and hundreds of thousands, of people do, every year. It's a very competitive field, of course. I immediately got swept away into the visual side of things, starting with visual effects, and then designing.
One time, I got to go play with lion cubs in Johannesburg. It was amazing. But it's difficult when you're on the road. We're always playing tennis, and there's a lot of pressure. So sometimes you don't get to do the things you'd like to do, because the priority is tennis.
We've got over 1 million merchants who have claimed their businesses on Foursquare, running specials and doing other things. What we want to do is take these tools used by the 50-100 national retailers and make them accessible to our 1 million merchants. Then you've got something really powerful.
I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?
I just did a part in 'Sin City 2.' I got to do a scene with Ray Liotta. Amazing man, extraordinary gentleman who was just so kind to me... I'm so excited about that; I think it's gonna be very cool.
Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.
You've just got to train hard. Conditioning is key, recovery is key. As hard as you work, recovery is just as important. All the soft-tissue work daily, all the things that keep me clean. And you've always got to be aware of what you're eating, what you're putting inside your body. That's key as well.
I hate going to L.A. and dealing with the contempt people have for television and television actors. It's unbelievable the kind of attitude people take toward what is the most exciting medium we've got right now.
I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing. And once, when I got an assignment back, she'd written: 'This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!' That made a big impression on me.
I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight.
On Monday and Thursday, I eat fewer than 500 calories a day; then I eat like a pig for the other five days. You 'surprise' the body: keep it guessing. I got the idea from a BBC documentary about this Indian man who seemed about 138 years old and said his secret was severe calorie restriction.
I did a lot of commercials early on, and I remember the first commercial I ever got was for a product called Funyuns. I had to eat these chips for, like, 12 hours straight.
I got to know Australians well working on the 'Mad Max' franchise with director George Miller.
I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.
What I try to do is that when I'm at home, I'm at home. We're working hard at putting away our devices and not taking calls. Sometimes, you have to, but I'll say, 'Look guys, I've got to take this call, but when I'm done, I'm all yours. I just need 20 minutes.'
It occurred to me the thing that broke my heart the most was when I grew up and realized everything wasn't an adventure. I got to a certain age and realized I couldn't be Indiana Jones.
I've got to stand up for the sport.
When I got the part, I tried to remember Batman as I knew him when I was a kid - with emotional recall.
On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches.
I guess the most seminal moment going early way back was my father died when I was 3 years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and my mother went back and got a degree.
I feel like hair is the number one thing that makes me feel beautiful or not. If I have really bad hair, but my makeup's beautiful and I have a wonderful dress on, I'm still not happy. So if I wake up, and I've got 2 big zits on my face and my hair looks fierce, I feel ok. I have a weird hair obsession.
When Bob Wilson left the BBC for ITV, I got the 'Football Focus' job, and it went from there. It came completely out of the blue, but the fact I had a high profile certainly helped.
As American as an apple is and as American as baseball is, they don't go together. You can't be chewing an apple at a baseball game. You've got to let go of the diet that day.
Listen, it's not nice to have your mum kill herself, that is difficult. But at the end of the day, it happened a long time ago. My mother was, I hope, not the reason that I have been successful. It's not as simplistic as 'My mum killed herself; I've got to prove myself.' I was very lucky that my parents took an interest in me.
I wasn't shy, but I was really hyper. Nobody got my sense of humor. I was a black skater kid.
I read a quote by James Dean when I was 17; he said, 'I'd rather starve than do a whole bunch of work that I don't care about.' The older I got, the more I understood what he was saying. If I want to do a whole lot of work that I don't care about, then I would probably be working in a law office somewhere.
Cancer's like the ultimate excuse. Who's gonna say, 'Oh, no, you have to show up for this one?' 'Hey, I got cancer. I can't be there.' It's the ultimate eraser.
