When I was a kid, the idea of gettin' paid to paint your face... listen, I grew up in Ossining, New York, a nice little town by the Hudson, and nothin' ever interested me except being your usual high school big shot, which I was an' loved it, played all the sports and goofed around, always out on the street with the guys, everything was funny t'me.
Sometimes you think about the job that we, as actors, do. I take it very seriously, and I care very much about it, but I'm paid to make believe. When you're a kid, you go to your friend's house, and it's, 'Let's pretend we're both cowboys!' Without belittling it, that's basically what I do - I tell stories.
I always was trying to make people laugh as a kid. I was a big fan of Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner. I watched them and I remember feeling as a child, when I heard the laughter they got, a little jealous that they made someone laugh like that.
Somewhere in my wildest childhood I must have done something right. Being able to make a boyhood dream come true is one thing, but to have a kid come along and thrill his dad like Brett Hull has thrilled me over his career is too much for one guy to handle.
I'm really a clean-cut kid.
I actually use women's perfume - I have since I was a kid. It's called Anais Anais, from Rachael. It smells like a beautiful woman and a bouquet of flowers. I use that and Right Guard deodorant.
Since I was a kid - youngest of five kids - I've always been starved for attention, like 'Look at me! Look at me! Look what I can do!'
We didn't even think about it, you know? I used to collect laser discs, and you'd have some college professor analyzing It's a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane, and now it is pretty funny - the idea of commentary for a silly kid's movie, you know?
Since I was a kid, I feel most confident when I'm reading.
I was not particularly bright, I wasn't very athletic, I was a little too tall, odd, funny looking, I was just really weird as a kid.
I was a regular dork. I was a kid who was scrawny and all that, and probably kind of dumb or something. I wasn't unordinary; I wasn't extraordinary.
I was a really, really depressed kid.
I used to get a haircut every Saturday so I would never miss any of the comic books. I had practically no hair when I was a kid!
I was the kid who never won the races... I wasn't on the list of the high-achieving.
I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.
I was a quiet, nerdy kid living in the Bronx. I spent most of my teens in my room, taking apart electrical items to figure out how they worked before putting them back together, and listening to the music my four older sisters and parents played.
It was, you know, probably 80 degrees out in L.A., and my dad took me outside and there was snow. At the time, I thought, 'Every kid doesn't have snow in their backyard on Christmas?'
I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who know me go, 'Oh yeah, Mailman, she's gone into her cave again.' I'm like that, a bit of a hibernating bear. Like that crocodile that just sits there in the water and doesn't do much. I was always a bit of a dreamer as a kid, so that hasn't changed.
My father was a minister, so I was a P.K., a preacher's kid.
Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling 'Bart,' and Bart sounds kind of like bark - like a barking dog.
My stepdad provided me with an amazing childhood. I played outside like a normal kid, I rode my bike, I walked to school, but the happiest times were when I was acting.
Every evening, I would excuse myself from playing in the backyard and go inside to watch the evening news... I wanted to get out there and see the world, and as a kid, I knew that Peter Jennings had a thirst and hunger to travel the world, too.
I started to do stop-motion when I was a kid. You take a Super 8 and make some models, and move, click, move, click. All that. I love all forms of animation, but there is something unique and special to stop-motion: it's more real and the set is lit like a set. But I think it's also a kind of lonely and dark thing to want to do.
I got injured when I was a kid, and it prevented me from becoming a footballer.
I remember growing up as a kid in Houston, playing 3-on-3 in my grandmother's driveway. I was lucky to be the youngest of four kids, so we had each other to keep ourselves busy and out of trouble. Not all kids are that fortunate.
I went through puberty late. I was a little, little, tiny kid. I was still growing in college.
I was working on the farm to get in shape, about a mile away from my parents. You know, I did everything as a kid to stay in shape - jogging, work on the farm, driving the tractor. I'll never forget.
Back then, as a kid, you made a choice of who you liked, and it was either us or 'Take That.' And if you liked 'East 17', it showed you knew what was going on, you were clued up, had better taste in music.
I was like any other kid: very normal, I can say. I just was a simple kid that came from a humble family and was taught by my father to be a family man and be committed to them. I stepped into boxing following my older brothers.
I've followed the NBA religiously since I was a kid, and now because of my boy Tony Parker, I'm a huge Spurs fan.
My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.
Having grown up there, my dad in 1967 took me to the Rams-Eagles game, and I've been a Rams fan since I was a kid.
I was the kid at six who was like, 'I want to be in a jazz club.' I was never the pop kid, ever. I mean that's not true, I had a couple years where I wanted to be Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, but aside from that, no.
As a kid, you obviously dream of being a professional footballer. I would watch players like Ronaldo of Brazil and pretend to be him in the playground. But I don't think about trying to become one of the best in the world or anything like that. I just play football.
I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.
When you're a kid growing up, and you think you're gay, you know that you're different; you're often teased and it can really destroy your self-esteem. But sports can be great for building self-esteem.
