I smoked for almost 10 years. I really regret that. Thankfully, I came out on the other side. I hope my lungs are repairing themselves now.
My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.
When I came to MSNBC, its identity as the place for politics was growing.
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.
I was always told at school I was posh, then I came to London, and here I'm told I have a country accent.
I think if you take 'Get Ready,' 'Waiting For The Siren's Call,' 'Lost Sirens' - those three New Order albums were mostly guitar-based. There were a couple of dance tunes in there, but they were mainly guitar-oriented. They came about through jamming, a lot of them.
'The Kumars'... played on five continents, and even when I came up with the idea, I was slightly surprised that no one else had.
People in my village had this mindset that in big cities like New York, if you are lost or without directions, no one will help you. The first time I came here, I tried to make sure not to walk by myself, because it would be difficult for me if I got lost. But people will help you.
I was just a normal athlete. My mother tried to spark something in me. She was an athlete in high school before she got pregnant with my older brother. She was 16, and that was it for her when it came to track and her education.
I always wanted to be an actor, even when I was a little kid. When I used to run away from home, I'd go to movies and sit all night watching Kirk Douglas. When I was 16, I tried getting into the Actors Studio, and they told me to get lost. I said 'I'll come back when I'm a man,' and I came back when I was 30.
The stance I took was there is no room for racial bias anywhere in sports. I believe that was basically all I said about it. Certainly I was cast as an abolitionist. Death threats came. Hate mail came.
And the narrative for the Taliban that they can wait us out is a flawed narrative. I think that the unambiguous international support for Afghanistan has been a very powerful message. You know, that was the message that came out of the NATO summit. We will not abandon Afghanistan.
I was pulled out of school for every moratorium day and every rally for a left-wing candidate... from Ed Koch in his heyday to Eugene McCarthy. That's the culture that I came from.
Being an actor only came about because Arnaud Desplechin, the guy who did 'Kings and Queen', had this curious idea to think that I could be an actor, but I had never acted before, and I was supposed to direct my own film!
After high school I was going to be an architect. In fact, I was studying to be an architect when the audition for 'The Monkees' came along.
Ah, my dad's whistle. On holidays when I was a kid, we would all be off in the rock pools along the beach. When it came time to go, we'd hear the whistle and we'd all come running. Like dogs!
It was weird. Like, people came up to me and knew me as Daredevil before any footage had come out. I remember a guy on the subway being like, 'You're Charlie Cox. You're Daredevil.' And I was like, 'Yeah...?' I was barely Daredevil. I hadn't even signed the contract, you know?
The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.
I remember the youth movement in 1968. It started on American university campuses as a protest against the Vietnam war, then came to Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. Within a year, you had an uprising of youth against their elders.
I suppose the best advice I ever got, frankly the advice that changed my life, came from my uncle who told me to go to drama school and study acting instead of taking a job, because he said the job would always be there.
When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'
The conclusion I came to was that even if I couldn't sell books, I still liked the process of writing.
I am filled with so much sincerity and gratitude to know where I came from and what I'm doing now.
My real guru are my experiences in life - the realisation that you are alone in this world came very early to me.
The best came from my martial arts teacher, who also taught Elvis. He said, 'Your ego will get you killed.'
I would say I came from upper middle class family.
Women and men just aren't that different. Oh, we're different in some intriguing ways, and it can be fun to band together for all-gal or all-guy projects. But when it comes to the tragic mess Christ came to heal, we're pretty much the same.
When 'Red Tails' came along, all I knew was that they were the first African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. Air Force. I had no idea how deep the story went or about all their amazing achievements. There were a few Tuskegee Airmen on the set to make sure everything was as authentic as possible.
For me, what I try to heal is the major thing that I think all of us go through, where we came from. From our family of origin.
I can't wait to see someone else from Louisville make a hit song 'cos that'd be dope. I can only imagine how J Cole would feel if somebody just came out of Fayetteville and started booming with some crazy records.
I realized that I had screwed up my life living different parts of my life in different places. I wasn't whole. I wasn't integrated. I wasn't a complete person. And after that, came out, spent some time at a psychiatric hospital.
I feel that Julian Assange came to be both paranoid and self-regarding in ways that ultimately undermined his own mission. And so, the transparency radical became a secret-keeper instead of a secret-leaker. And that, I think, is a big problem.
Look at Montgomery Gentry. If those boys came out in the '70s, they'd be Southern rock.
Until Systers came into existence, the notion of a global 'community of women in computer science' did not exist.
When I first came into New York City, what I did was, I didn't have very much money, and I couldn't afford pictures or a resume, so what I used to do is I would tear off the back of a matchbook, and I'd write my name and telephone number on the back of the matchbook.
