Ali was a guy that had a lot of discipline. If you hung around him, you'd be able to get some of that discipline that he had. And I learned from that. He was a sweet man.
I went to NYU, and my parents had a rule that I needed to major in something other than acting if I wanted to pursue acting after college.
Cancer has been unfortunately in my life. My mom's best friend is kicking ass in her battle with breast cancer. Both of my grandmas had cancer. I recently lost a friend to cancer.
It took a long time to get that film made. I went in for it almost right after or like maybe six or seven months after I had my son and actually auditioned for the Regina King part and they just were like, 'No, you're just - you just don't really seem the part.'
If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.
I always had a powerful serve. It's one of the best in women's tennis. It's very good to have a weapon like that.
I didn't get my licence because I wasn't allowed to. But I haven't had a seizure for a long time so I could, theoretically, get my licence. But I'm now just so used to not driving, I'm scared of what I'd do.
It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.
I feel bad for young actors who become huge stars too quickly, because you haven't had a chance to practice your craft a lot.
Somewhere along the line, Bob said I'd better begin taking this business seriously, because, whether I liked it or not, I had a career.
Frankly, no one had ever asked me before. My sexuality is something I'm completely comfortable with and open about.
Because I didn't go to drama school, I didn't start in the business with any toolbox apart from enthusiasm and instinct. I'd throw everything at a part and sometimes realise that I had hit my limits.
I met all these important people and did all these stories, but I always had such excellent producers and assistants. I could show up to interview a world leader or a criminal and they would have things so well prepared anyone could have done it. It wasn't about 'me,' it was about 'us.'
Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.
When I was growing up, we spoke Egyptian, we ate Egyptian food, we had other Egyptian friends. It was my father's preference.
I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.
My dad was part of the Oriole way. I think he was there 14 years in the minor leagues; I think seven of those years, they had the same people in place. So it was about continuity. It was about stability.
The gay-rights community had a strategy going in; they thought that they needed to have 30 states with some form of recognition - whether that be marriage, whether it be civil unions - but they wanted to have 30 states signed on before they went to the federal courts.
When I first started acting, I had all these ideals about the kinds of roles I wanted to play, but the reality is that when you do television - and I do a lot of television - you get cast for qualities that you have as a person. So I look for qualities that I like to portray.
Basketball is my first love. If my health had permitted me, I would still be playing, but I am glad in retrospect that everything happened the way it did.
Only recently have I been introduced to the gym and heavy weightlifting and things like that. Before that, when I grew up, I just did a lot of gymnastics and dance. I had more of an athletic background, but nothing where I was in the gym or using any kind of weights.
I was in line at a store and there was a little girl, she was standing in line next to me and some other girls had come up to me and recognized me from 'Pretty Little Liars.' When they walked away, this girl was staring at me, and her eyes got so big, and she started crying. It was, like, the cutest thing.
We certainly could have voted on making the middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for working families permanent had the Republicans not insisted that the only way they would support those tax breaks is if we also added $700 billion to the deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. That's what was really disturbing.
Dean had just come from seeing his lawyer. That was the first time that I found out that he had consulted a lawyer. He wanted to tell me what he thought was going on, but he was writing it down as if my house was bugged. He acted like everything was bugged.
Just to see him come on the stage was an event. They had very high risers, and back a little bit, so he'd walk around behind the risers and right across the front of the stage to the podium, remember?
I only knew a few people, literally a handful of people, al of whom had been in the Party long before I was, all of whom were known by the FBI and were known to the Committee.
After 'Star Trek,' I was the commander on 'Stargate Atlantis,' the final season, and once my character had become a good commander, I was sorry that the show didn't last beyond that.
We had to give each other permission to be different as parents. That's why there's a mom and a dad with two different approaches, because you do need both.
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason.
It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.
My mom would give me a piece to play, but I wouldn't do any theory because when it came time to do it I would sneak back upstairs and watch TV. So, I had these kind of nonchalant lessons for years, then it just started soaking in.
OK, I've had a life of sort of success, some people know who I am but a lot of people don't. I feel the need to change that still.
In 2000, I fell in love. I had never felt anything like that before in my life. It kind of took me over.
No one picked on me for my lunch money. Probably because it was the 1980s and no one had lunch money.
When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.
