When I was a kid, my mother's parenting style teetered between benign neglect and intense bouts of violence.
I wasn't a comic book aficionado at all when I was a kid, but my cousin Weed was. Every time we went to visit him on the farm, he had two really fun things: comedy albums and comic books.
In my sophomore year, a kid told me that the secret to getting women is to play really, really hard to get. I followed his advice, and I didn't have so much as a date that year.
I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place. But I kept on acting, and eventually, I just dropped out of school and continued acting.
I was a smart kid, but I hated school.
When 'American Pie' happened, I was so lucky to get that opportunity and I just tried to do a good job in that genre. But the films that inspired me as a kid were, like, Malcolm McDowall in 'A Clockwork Orange.' He was my hero.
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky - poor parents! - I would be home before it got dark.
When I was a kid, I saw 'Rambo First Blood', and the next day, I took knives to school and threw them at everybody. So I was definitely influenced by violent films before 'Drive.'
I was rambunctious - a boy's boy, full of energy. I wasn't a bad kid. I just liked to talk.
As a kid, you don't have a ton of spaces where you are honored, where what you think is honored and what you say is revered.
I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.
I was painfully shy when I was a kid. I always thought when most people were born, part of the toolkit was teaching you how to relate to other people - and it was just left out of my toolkit.
When I was a little kid, I used to watch with my brother when there was Macho Man and Hulk Hogan. But then I fell out of it for a few years.
Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19.
I pay attention when the Academy Awards come around. I haven't watched them in a while, but I used to watch them religiously when I was a kid.
When you're a kid dreaming, anything seems possible.
I was miserable as a kid.
I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, where Bonnie and Clyde were from, so when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to drive me past the Barrow Filling Station. At my elementary school, there was a barn outside that they used to say was a Bonnie and Clyde hangout.
I will do anything for anybody that asks me to do anything for a kid.
When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood - and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.
I grew up a big comic book reader, as a kid, and I love the whole fanboy crowd.
My mom and stepdad were strict. I couldn't date; I couldn't go out. And I was a kid who was never good at just taking no for an answer. I needed to understand why. And sometimes they weren't interested in explaining.
In my day, when I was a young kid, army duty was compulsory in South Africa or you go to jail. I had the choice, so I spent a year in the entertainment unit, and outside of doing shows - and I used to write for, arrange for the big band - outside of doing that, I actually had a rock band in the army.
I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.
I'll tell a young kid in a minute, 'If you don't know how to read, then what good is trying to be an MC?' Like, you can MC, but if you're not trying to be a better person, learn and apply that to your MCing, then how far do you think you're really going to go?
I wanted to write a very simple story about a boy, a wolf, a girl, a bear and a forest, so I thought I might set it in the past. I didn't realise that it went back to when I was 10: I used to love the Stone Age when I was a kid and wanted to live in it, and I got rid of my bed and slept on the floor, but I didn't remember it.
I've worked with homeless kids, kids in foster care, and I've never met a kid who couldn't be reached.
I started to watch 'Play for Today' and plays like 'Cathy Come Home,' and Kenneth Branagh's 'Billy' trilogy in the 1980s, which took us into the world of the Belfast family. As a kid in Luton, how was I ever going to know that world otherwise?
The thing is when I started doing standup, you had to have a clean act because that's how you got on television. There weren't all these cable shows. Also, I didn't want to have that kind of act in case my family came to see me or my kid one day.
I've seen kids turn their lives around. It's usually a kid who's outside of the team-sport world, or maybe has a darker personality or doesn't fit in. Skateboarding ends up being something they latch onto. It sounds hokey, but finding a focus on something - whether it's skateboard or playing your guitar - can be life changing.
I was a lucky kid, and I grew up connected to a lot of people.
As far as cartoons go, I watched a lot of 'Ed, Edd, n Eddy' when I was a kid.
I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'
The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer.
I'm not sure what to call 'Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary.' Nonfiction? Movie/toy fiction? But it is any Lego/'Star Wars' kid's dream. Call it spectacular.
Maybe all teenagers feel like they don't fit in. I never felt like a cool kid. I remember being bullied for being Asian.
