My father did everything for me. He was awesome.
There's been times when I've had heartbreaking moments and I'm like, 'I can't believe you said that,' or 'I can't believe you did that'. And it hurts, it still hurts, and it'll always hurt, but I've never had somebody that I truly cared about just walk out on me, whether it was a boyfriend, or an aunt, mom or dad.
My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
I've been on 'Mastermind' - I tied for first place and then lost on the number of passes. My subject was the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Philip Pullman. If I did it again, I'd choose Shakespearian tragedies.
I was reading scripts, doing coverage, for CAA. Reading hundreds and hundreds of scripts across the board, from blind submissions to 'Brokeback Mountain'. It was not always a pleasant task but something, in hindsight, I'm glad I did.
I didn't really take a lot of any on-camera classes or anything like that. I really just threw all of my energy into auditioning, and I know that I basically just did things based on feedback that I would get.
There's one point where I play the piano upside down. When I first did that, I hit my head and it really hurt. But people were laughing, so we've kept it in ever since. I probably have severe brain damage.
My father was very energetic; my mother was very energetic. He lived to a very old age, and so did my mother. I believe that I just have it from my father, from my parents. They had wonderful energy.
I always knew that I wanted to do voiceovers as part of my career. I just kind of didn't expect it to take off the way it did. I couldn't be happier. I love the chance to play so many different characters every day.
I grew up in a lot of different places, mostly in Kansas, I really started thinking seriously about acting in high school; I just did it better than most of the other activities in school.
I know the one time I tried therapy, I did after a month or two, and I only lasted a few months, because I started to worry about being entertaining. I kept driving there once a week for an hour and I'm thinking 'What am I going to talk about today?'
I first wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided against that in medical school when I discovered that psychiatrists didn't, in reality, do what they did on TV.
They said if I'd fight a ranked contender, I'd get a title shot. I did that, and the next day they changed the rules.
I dabbled in football myself until the age of 14, but I didn't have as much love for the sport as I did track and field. I would never have been good enough to take it to the highest level.
Why did I not stop to have children? I suppose because the opportunity didn't present itself. Yes, many women feel they are not complete without having children, but I have different creative outlets.
My first CD that I had was the Ying Yang Twinz, and my grandma bought it for me. Honestly, I think my grandma got it from a thrift store or something. She just got it for me. It was in downtown Philadelphia. And I would listen to it. I liked it. None of my friends did, though, but I liked it.
In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.
I love to be alone, and I did as a child as well, especially if I was outside.
I don't think many of us face the same sort of physical adventures our ancestors did, at least not on a daily basis.
I wanted to do 'Texas Trilogy' on stage. But it didn't do well in New York. In fact, it did very badly there, thanks to the critics. It was said that Preston Jones, the author, died of ulcer complications, but the truth was that the critics killed him.
Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it.
I remember the excitement of finding a great pancake recipe in 'Gourmet.' It felt as if it were mine. And it was Berkeley, of course - everybody cooked together. Cooking is what one did.
The Rolling Stones seemed very loose and wild, but when you read about them, you realize that everything they did is very deliberate.
Jesus did not get stuck in intellectual arguments with people. He did not go for the intellect; He went for the conscience. He spoke to that part of the person that knows the difference between right and wrong instinctively.
Did you ever see the customers in health - food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half - dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look terrific.
A lot of Christians look at Hollywood as the ultimate evil. But what it did for me is it sharpened my ability to love people and appreciate people, no matter where they're at in their lives.
'The Last Seduction,' 'Sleepless in Seattle' and 'While You Were Sleeping' did a lot to get me noticed for bigger roles.
If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.
I basically have my life today as a result of what I did as a child. What did I miss out on? Yeah, I missed not hanging out at shopping malls, I guess, but that is not a big deal because you don't get a medal for that.
If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.
Fame changed my life completely because, for a while, I was in a position to choose what I did. I miss that aspect. But I always felt uncomfortable with it.
I guess coming after 'Country Grammar' and everybody thinking, 'Well maybe, that was it.' To come back with something like 'Nellyville' and to have people accept it and appreciate it the way they did, that was a great move.
Client companies and advertising agencies are old-world-order places. The systems and processes and structures come from a time when you shot the TV commercial, then you did the print ads, then you did everything else - including the website. Everything has changed, but the systems haven't.
You can't plan everything - if I did a performance exactly how I rehearsed it, it would be so boring.
I love comic books and always did as a kid.
Belly buttons were a big battle of mine. Down at the syndicate, they would clip them out with a razor blade. I began putting so many of them in, in the margins and everywhere, that they had a little box down there called 'Beetle Bailey''s Belly-Button Box. The editors finally gave up after I did one strip showing a delivery of navel oranges.
