I had great representatives looking out for my best interests and safety. They just happened to be my parents.
I asked for a guitar when I was 8 years old for Christmas. I have no idea why. I never had any guitar heroes. I still don't. But there must have been something in me because I've been playing for 30 years.
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'
I went through a period at boarding school when my coaches wanted me to switch to snowboarding because they thought I was no good at skiing. I was too skinny. I had terrible technique. They were saying I should be a snowboarder, and luckily, I resisted.
I had a very active inner life as a kid. There's a good album or two worth of stuff that I can bring out on a rainy day if I have a loss for inspiration or whatever - even now.
My daddy had been a fiddler, and I heard a lot of fiddle music as a child. I had a ukulele and had played along with him.
Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion.
I had eight brothers and sisters. Every Christmas my younger brother Bobby would wake up extra early and open everybody's presents - everybody's - so by the time the rest of us got up, all the gifts were shredded, ribbons off, torn open and thrown aside.
I've loved acting and dancing since I was a kid. Before anyone thought I was pretty or before I had a voluptuous figure, that was what I was going to do.
I gave three years of my life to take care of my dying mother who had Alzheimer's disease. Being there for her every need for three years might have looked codependent but it wasn't because it was what I wanted to do.
I've been on the side where you have nothing, and now I'm on the side where anything I want is there for me. When I didn't have the means to do whatever I wanted to do, I still had peace.
I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter.
Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.
Because in order to beat Jimmy, I had to get around the ball a little bit quicker so I wasn't always on defensive and catching the ball on last stride, that I had little more time. Once I was able to get little bit quicker, then it has helped me a lot.
I had a flip phone until I was 25, and I didn't use social media until that age, either.
I'd go dance at talent shows, and because I was young I had the upper hand on a lot of other crews. People thought it was cute. I used that to my advantage.
It's Toby Jones playing Alfred Hitchcock, not Alfred Hitchcock. We all felt that his silhouette was crucial, so his nose and lips were crucial as well. We had to build it out a bit to get the silhouette. But, with my nose being so small within the proportion of my face, the first nose was too big. I felt like a nose on parade.
Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.
I had a serious childhood illness - sort of like spinal meningitis - that led to a three-month hospitalization. Afterward, I couldn't be insured because of a pre-existing condition.
It's interesting - years ago, I had such bad stage fright during musical theater auditions that I just gave up. And now I'm on Broadway.
I was taught a lot of Bible at home and had a voracious appetite for reading the Bible.
Let's be honest: I don't want to walk out to boos. I always want to be cheered, like anyone, and I've been very lucky over the years to have a lot of support. Coming to America, I'm always the away guy, and so people thought their guy had to take me out, and they boo.
As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like.
I'm lucky that, despite all the bad press I've had over the years, the public still seems to like me.
We had offers to go everywhere and we could have done them. But what would have been the point? We were tired. We had worked hard and needed a break before we got stale. We spent six months at home and writing songs.
I've seen lights in the sky, I've seen UFOs, I've even seen something on the ground that I can't explain, but I've never actually seen a being. I wish I had.
I felt fine after 24 hours and asked the state commission to prolong my stay in space to three days. And I carried out the entire schedule. Could I have done that if I had been half-dead?
I had this song called Helter Skelter, which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise.
Although Cronkite had once crash landed in a Dutch potato field under enemy fire, he chose instead to focus on celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands at the hands of the Free Dutch.
I had a terrible job letting me do anything that wasn't comedy.
In Windsor in the forties, and even up into the fifties and sixties, if you were black, you had to sit in the balcony of the theatres, and you couldn't buy property in most places.
Very intense first summer out, to be 18 years old and never having gone on a date, never having smoked a cigarette, never had a drink, even a sip of beer, never kissed a girl, all of those things. It made for a fairly intense first year out.
The director I had most involvement with was Alex Rockwell. He gave me a lot of responsibility as an actor.
I've had many a player tell me all through high school and right up until signing day that they were coming to Alabama, then they signed with somebody else.
The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.
You make a movie, and if there's a red light flashing in the distance, everyone thinks that the director had a whole lot of money and a great idea that the red light means something. Then you say, 'Yeah, we couldn't afford to shut the red light off that was broken two blocks away.'
