When my dad hit 40, he quit everything. He sold the house and bought the boat and went off sailing the world. I was on that boat from age 12 to 18. We didn't actually go around the world. We went pretty much from France through the whole Mediterranean basin. We went to Ireland first. We also went to coast of Africa, South America and the Caribbean.
I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience.
There is a history of footballers in my family; my granddad played for Notts County and my dad played at county level.
I was born and brought up in Liverpool with my clever little sister Jemma, who is 14 and wants to be a vet. My mum Jane is an administrator and my dad Peter is a taxi driver.
A large part of my life revolves around my dad. Sometimes, I even feel a strong sense of connection, something very tangible when I learn something new in the martial arts.
My friends say, 'Man you're going to have kids sleeping on pillowcases with your face on it! You're going to be on toothbrushes and magnets and stuff.' I guess now that I'm a dad, I'm thrilled about that.
My dad died right after performing at the Friars' roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I have that tape somewhere. There's still a lot of good jokes in there. I mean, that was 1958.
I feel lazy when I'm not working. I learned all my business sense from my dad. He always believed in me, and I think the last thing he said to me before he passed away was, 'I know you're gonna be OK. I'm not worried about you'.
To us, there was Bob Dylan, and there was dad. As for what he meant to other people, that was never glorified in our house. There were no accolades there, no gold records.
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.
I wanted to be a mechanic. When I was 14 I wanted to quit school and go work on my car. But my dad said Son, you shouldn't do that. You should stay in school until your education is finished, and when you're done, don't make your hobby your job.
I always liked performing in front of my parents' friends. My dad bought me a karaoke machine, and I would put on a Michael Jackson song like 'Thriller,' and I would come out with, like, a hat and a jacket, and, like, moonwalk in my socks, so I was always performing.
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 mom's been married three times; my dad has been married a lot. I didn't really see my dad that much.
Honestly, in retrospect, it probably was a little easier being an adolescent and not having people immediately know that Hef was my dad.
My dad was president of the volunteer fire department, which was within walking distance to our house. I spent several days of each week there with him - any time the whistle blew, he went. It was truly inspiring to watch him lead that way.
I'm probably a little more like my dad. But because of my mom, I never saw being a woman as being an impediment to being able to do something. She had her Ph.D. before I was born.
My dad said, 'Stay humble, and you gotta work harder than everybody else.' My mom said, 'Always be yourself.' She always told me only God can judge me.
I always thought that family was the most important thing in life, and no matter what I do, whether being a chef or an actor or a dancer, being a dad is what I do best.
I think people like to think I'm in some way financially dependent on my family - on my dad - but the fact of the matter is I've been emancipated from my father since I was 14 years old. That's something people don't know or understand.
My dad actually taught me to box when I was, like, nine years old, because I got picked on at school all of the time. I was on a boys' hockey team, so I would get all of my aggression out there.
My dad told me, 'It takes fifteen years to be an overnight success', and it took me seventeen and a half years.
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.
My mum is Croatian, and obviously she's female and she's very emotional, very hot-blooded, very touchy-feely, whereas I think my dad's quite British.
I guess I learnt to appreciate old Hindi-movie music from my dad and somewhere down the line picked up jazz as well.
I was raised by a single dad, and I've always kind of liked things that are typically more guy-oriented.
My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything.
I thought I had everything going for me. I wasn't listening to nobody. And my dad was like, 'Uh-uh, you can't make money from music. You have to be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer. Something that's going to do something for this world. Music doesn't do anything.' And I had to fight that, his passion, and fight the society that I was from.
After I won Miss America, I called my dad, who had four kids in college, to say he no longer had to pay for Stanford.
There are certain things I talk to my mom and certain things I speak to dad for. But I also know that it has never been that I can tell my mum something and my dad won't know. They are very dependent on each other even though they may not say it or realise it.
My dad said to me growing up: 'When all is said and done, if you can count all your true friends on one hand, you're a lucky man.'
If I were a dad, I'd have my kids watch 'I Love Lucy' and 'The Honeymooners.'
My dad was my best friend. I worshipped him. All of my success in life really comes from him. He believed that you get nothing from negativity.
A lot of my friends, when I was 14 or 15, they were all up and down, wanting to go out on a Friday night, and my dad had me working really late on Fridays and Saturday mornings and even on Sunday mornings. And when I'd finished all that, we used to spend the rest of the time talking about boxing.
I think we were born 6 feet tall and then started to grow from there. My dad's not particularly tall - only 5 feet, 11 inches - but his mother was almost 6 feet and straight as a ramrod: a German woman who used to scare the hell out of me.
Wherever you're from, you adapt to your environment. It definitely made my music a little bit more explicit. Because I really was in North Philly, I listened to State Property and stuff. Everything my dad listened to, I listened to.
