None of my sisters are in the movies, nor are my nieces going to be. That's how Dutt 'sahab,' my dad, brought up the girls in the family, and I am just carrying his thought forward.
My dad was always the soldier I wanted to be.
I think Americans appreciate that my dad's a genuine guy. He's not gonna manicure every little word, and he's not massaging it. He's not running computer analytics to tell you what you want to hear and then do whatever the special interests tell him what they want him to do in the end.
I never got on the course with my dad, but to be playing golf with my kids - that's a dream.
My dad was a city councilman and a county commissioner, so I grew up involved and engaged in the political process.
I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into.
I always had a standard of, back when I was doing the country music I always told people I would never record a song that I wouldn't sit down and sing in front of my mom and dad.
The physical DNA has always been part of our family. My dad was a good boxer and gymnast; my mum is a ballroom dancer, and my brother does martial arts.
My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.
Being a dad is the best role I've ever played, with all due respect to Steve Sanders. It really is the best thing ever.
My dad was a big Frank Zappa fan, so I remember listening to a lot of Frank Zappa. Girls do not like Frank Zappa.
I was in the bath at the time, and my dad came running in and said, 'Guess who they want to play Harry Potter!?' and I started to cry. It was probably the best moment of my life.
My dad was the way he was, but he also gave me a motto: never say die. Just to keep pushing and pushing, fighting until the end. He put it in my head that you're always going to fight, and you're always going to beat them.
My dad had a flock of sheep, which he used to milk, and then my mum used to make cheese and yogurt out of the sheep's milk and sell it. It was kind of an unusual upbringing, really.
For me it's hard, especially being a young African-American woman. My dad doesn't look like what you might call the 'safe' African-American male that America would accept, if you know what I mean.
I think my mom and dad have an incredible work ethic, and we've grown up around it.
My dad is a Chatty Cathy, the social butterfly; friendly; knows everybody in the whole world by six degrees; tells me that every performance is the greatest he's ever seen, every new outfit is the coolest. Constant cheerleader.
My dad was a designer for Upper Deck, and I had hundreds of Ken Griffey Jr. cards. Hundreds. I could have paid for college with them.
I probably would have gone the M.F.A. route except I was a dad at 19, and it made more sense to go to work for a newspaper and support a kid that way. But the funny thing is, that detour became the most important step in my developing as a novelist.
I'm a soccer dad at heart. I want five kids, and I want to get married. I want to coach Little League.
My question about luging is, How do you get into the luge community to begin with? Is it one day like, 'Mom, Dad, I really want to luge.' And your parents are like: 'O.K., I'll quit my job. We'll move to an Alpine community.'
For me specifically, it was important to graduate. In my family, I was one of the first graduates. My mom did not have a college degree. My dad did not have a college degree.
I was always the new kid in school, I'm the kid from a broken family, I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.
When I stopped playing hockey and started acting, the last person I was going to ask for help was my dad. He's the king of being like, 'I don't know. It's good work if you can get it. Good luck.'
It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake.
Going to the theater is such a joyous experience. My dad would take my sister and me to plays when we were very young, like six or seven years old.
If anybody had a reason to become a delinquent, to become a criminal, to be angry at the man, to be angry at the white man, to be angry at America, it's my dad, but he did not feel that way at all.
My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.
My brother was the consummate Nebraska boy - the football star who went to the university, was president of his fraternity, hunted with my dad all the time.
My dad was always in sales. My mom had a heart for the ages. Worked in recreation, doing rehabilitation in nursing homes. Very nice, practical folks who were very proud of me but had no inclination toward the stage in any way.
Dad worked his entire career as an aviation technician. Mom was a legal secretary who became a teacher. We lived a simple American life.
I like to keep most of my bats. I think I have about 250 bats, including my first - which cost Rs 2000 - a gift from my dad in 1998, when I moved to the hostel.
My dad signed me up for some acting classes at a place in Honolulu, and there I got to audition for some L.A.-based talent agents. I got a few 'callbacks' and so my mom and I decided to fly to California and check it out!
I went to Brooklyn College as an education major. It was a big deal in the family, but really, I was living for Mom and Dad.
I think I said something mean when I was little, and my mother snapped on me. I was just like, 'I'm sorry!' I could relate. If I had cursed out my dad, I probably would be just waking up.
No one in my family had ever been in politics. My dad thought it was something that got in the way.
