My dad was very rough with us.
My dad lives in Sicily, so I'm half Italian and half Irish - it's a fiery combination.
My dad showed me a football and would throw it up and have my dog - a German Shepherd - chase me around when I went after the ball. I caught it because I was scared of that dog. The next year, my dad talked to the commissioner of a local league and convinced him to let me play as a first grader with third graders.
My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house.
My dad went to jail for a long time. We lost everything, and the situation never resolved itself. My parents had this sort of passionate, disastrous desire for each other - not ideal to grow up in.
My dad died of a heart attack when I was 15. I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. I went through a divorce - those not-so-great things are all a part of me, and they give me a place to go when I cover those stories on the news. I'm more empathetic, more relatable because of them.
My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Alice In Chains... it was all over the place. I had a Third Eye Blind record, but I also had Korn, Courtney Love, and Shania Twain.
My dad is too cute. Every morning, he sends me one motivational quote. I have a folder full of all his quotes.
My dad's a very shrewd, clever guy.
It's man's work. My dad was gone at 4:30 in the morning and home at 8 at night, and he worked underground, and the last mine he worked in was 26 inches high in a lot of places. He liked the engineering of it - he liked the moving the earth and being able to extract something and put it back for reclamation. He enjoyed the whole process.
My dad worked three jobs and was a teacher. My mother was a teacher's aid, making, like, $3 an hour. My father went on to get his master's and became active in all these minority engineering programs. And my mother started running for public office. All that happened after the kids were adults. But I'm insanely proud of them.
I wrote a song called 'Here on Earth,' and the hook is, 'There's no answers here on earth.' Basically, searching for the 'why' when someone passes away, and I feel really fortunate that my dad lived as long as he did. But no matter what happens or how it happens, it's certainly a stinker.
My dad does tons of voiceovers; he was Duke in 'G.I. Joe' and 'Transformers' and Handy, Lazy, and Grouchy Smurf, so I grew up with the best bed time stories ever.
The thing is, my dad's always been more of a bookworm; he was interested in more intellectual pursuits, but nobody can escape the passion that football stirs.
Even when I was doing well in acting, my dad would say, 'You can still go back to dental school.' But since I've been on '90210,' I haven't heard that.
I have a strong head on my shoulders... I've always been grounded. People would think not because of who I am, but I've always been raised with that sense of morals from my dad and my mother.
People who couldn't walk, they'd come in wheelchairs, and he'd make them walk. It's just the power of God. It wasn't my dad; it's what God had instructed my dad to do.
My dad spent most of the '50s and early '60s actually acting as sort of an advance man for the Justice Department, as a civil rights lawyer. So it was actually reading his papers after he passed away a few years ago that first started me thinking about this... What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man?
My parents did divorce, but my dad has always been present for me and loving me and my mom as well when she was alive.
My dad named me after Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general who attacked Rome. But nobody knows about him.
I don't think there's any real motivation for somebody to be a truck driver. Mine was simple; dad was a truck driver, I wanted to own one.
I think we sometimes forget that we have so many other places to create change. My dad taught me this, but the political is one spot to make change. But so is writing a book.
But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad.
I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That's my heritage.
My dad taught me to never be pigeonholed; to really allow yourself to reinvent characters as they reinvent you; to be bold and to be willing to play seemingly unlikeable people.
My father was the quintessential husband and dad.
I was born into a middle class family in New Jersey. My dad came home from serving in the Army after having lost his father, worked in the Breyers ice cream plant in Newark, New Jersey. Was the first person to graduate from college.
Every year of my life, my dad has sent me a Valentine's Day gift. Whether I was in the same house or across the country, he always sent something.
I remember, as a kid, riding in the back of my dad's old Saab 95 in Denmark. We were on the highway, and suddenly this silver Maserati Bora came upon us, then passed. At the time, to me, this car looked like a spaceship.
Some article called me the most feared man in Silicon Valley. Good Lord! Why? My teenage boys got a kick out of it: 'Dad, how could this be true? You're not even the most feared person in this house.'
I found myself very lost after 'The Partridge Family,' and I lost my dad and I lost my manager, and I lived in a bubble, and it took me 15 years to get through that and a lot of psychotherapy, and I'm laughing about it now!
My dad was not happy about my not becoming an architect like him.
You may earn whatever money you earn as a cricketer, but you want to play for your country. At the end of the day, you want to do something special. There are plenty of people who earn 50 crores or 100 crores as businessmen or big professionals or who are really doing well in business. But what gives pleasure to your mom and dad is the fame.
I grew up in a family of piano players. Both my sisters were serious players, and they both, as they became more accomplished, aspired to buy a Steinway and asked my dad to buy a Steinway.
My dad introduced me to baseball. Then one of my friends asked if I could play on a team; my dad said I could, and I just fell in love with the game.
My mom is very romantic. As is my dad. They appreciate real romance.
