I had this little rap group, and we were called '2 Too Many'... We used to hang out in front of Jazzy Jeff's record studio every day.
It was not hard for me to find guidance and motivation. I'm very blessed, and my parents were always so supportive of myself and my brother. Whatever you wanted to do, you just had to give 110 percent. So whatever that was, they supported it.
What I had heard about TV is that it's very rigid - that you have to hit your mark, look a certain way, do certain things, that there is no freedom artistically - and that's my worst nightmare. I don't work well in rigid environments.
I had underwear thrown on stage that said 'Gokey' on the back... all glittery! It was grandma-underwear, too.
I have never understood the clamour for waif-like women whose flesh acts merely as a thin veil for their bones - much as I would love to be thinner, I would hate to take it so far that I had no actual shape at all.
I've had biker clubs reach out to me whenever they knew I was in their city.
I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren't very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.
I guess more than anything, I just realized, okay, one day I had a home to live in and my family around me. The next day, I did not.
I feel like I have had the most amazing life in my public service.
The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I'd record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you've heard about Graceland during Elvis's glory days is true and then some.
I like to decide the night before Thanksgiving that I'm gonna do it, and I'll see what riff raff is around. Then I get that last-minute surge of energy. But if I had two weeks to plan, sometimes I wish I wasn't doing it. But very seldom does that happen.
I have been fighting writing songs for a long time. People keep telling me I should write, and other writers have offered to write with me, and to be honest, it's not something I've ever really had a passion for - plus I wasn't sure I had the talent to do it!
President Clinton intentionally created a structure that was a little loose. And one that kept him a little in the center. He didn't want one person filtering all the information that went to him. He had always operated with a lot of information coming in and a lot of stuff going out.
Growing up in Rhode Island, I dreamed of a career in law enforcement. That hasn't worked out exactly as I had planned, but life seldom does.
Of course I'm naughty. I've always had to compete for attention, you see.
I've always had a healthy disregard for authority - it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.
If you look at top players - Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi - so many had a parent who was domineering to the point where you really had to question his sanity. It was nuts.
If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.
I never had, like, a nanny that took care of me. My mom always fed me breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I thought I had more of a European sense of humour than the average American comic.
I actually studied literature at university, so I'm much more of an arts-based person, but I remember I actually did enjoy physics because you got to do weird experiments. I remember we did this thing with static where we all had to put our hands on this static ball to see that your hair would all stand on end.
I was broadcast-struck from an early age; I had saved up for a tape recorder and started making programmes.
I had a little portable typewriter. I call it my Harlem Literary Fellowship.
Superstar was made so early in my career I had nothing to do with it at all. The first time I saw it was the opening screening.
I never had a written contract, was never officially a stable jockey.
My childhood bedroom had wallpaper that was printed with clouds and rainbows.
I was on the SWAT team in the FBI, and I had always wanted to be in SWAT.
I still get lots of folks who remember my days on ATWT and AMC. As a matter of fact, they're the proudest fans of all because they feel like, 'We were here first,' before I had other fans from all my other shows and movies. They feel a deeper sense of pride and connection to me and have followed my career ever since 2002.
My mom played 12-string and sang, and my dad could play pretty much any wind instrument and had a great ear for harmony. Soon enough, my sister and I got into music because we were always around it, and people were always listening to it.
I always wanted to be an actor, but I always loved design, and growing up in New Orleans there was such great style, great architecture. I would decorate my little apartment in New York over and over again, because it only had a couple of rooms. And I did it for friends and family on the side just for fun.
I remember seeing this picture my mother had of Dick Clark. It didn't inspire me to be an actor or anything, but when I did 'American Dreams' with Dick Clark, my mother came out, and she showed him this picture of them that was taken 35 years earlier. It was great.
When I was a kid, in a very white boarding school in England in the '90s, I had this sort of middle part that kids had - that sort of long, floppy hair. So I was always desperate to have long, floppy hair, and I would try and brush it and spray it, and it would just look like a Brillo pad!
In the first place, it's surreal to watch filming, to see the little ideas you had in your head and now Taylor Kitsch is doing it, or Salma Hayek. And then to see it loud and bright onscreen is a trip.
If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh.
I have had the good fortune to be able to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. I have enjoyed the freedom I had gained from building a successful business from scratch, making some money, and creating the lifestyle I wanted.
I had been reading magazines a lot, and I love magazines, and so I was always asking myself why is it that these gorgeous articles just don't translate well to the web? Presentation was one aspect of it.
