I'm a first generation American. My mother is Italian and Russian and a lot of other things, and my father is Uruguayan. In fact, my mother's been married twice, and both men were Uruguayan. So I grew up in a very European/Latin American-influenced home.
My father rebelled ferociously against his conservative upbringing where his father physically abused him.
It breaks my heart that my father never knew my children. He should have been around for another 25 years.
I love my mother and father. The older I get, the more I value everything that they gave me.
I think I was well brought up, for my father and mother were of one mind regarding the care of the family.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
I had a wonderful father, and I couldn't bear that television virtually ignored black fathers.
I took one acting class as an undergrad, and I loved it. I was in a very avant-garde play at UCLA about a closeted, married homosexual. I played his father.
Nothing in my early childhood suggested to anyone - except maybe my father - that one day I would be standing here and be known simply as Judge Judy.
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we'd go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father's televised service for 17 years.
Social progress is a big thing for me. Although science fiction is traditionally concerned with the hard sciences, which is chemistry, physics, and, some might argue, biology, my father was and still is a social scientist at the University of Toronto.
There was no place at all for me in my father's military world.
My mother wanted a conservative, secure life, and she has been married to my father since she was 18... A lot of hard work went into that marriage and a lot of not getting what you want.
At times I've got a really big ego. But I'll tell you the best thing about me. I'm some guy's dad; I'm some little gal's dad. When I die, if they say I was Annie's husband and Zachary John and Anna Kate's father, boy, that's enough for me to be remembered by. That's more than enough.
I grew up in Northern California, so the hippies were still around. My father and mother were very Republican, very strait-laced and very uptight, but my uncles were hippies.
I knew I didn't want to pursue an academic career at all, which, of course, my father would have loved me to have done. I didn't want to go to university. The only other thing I could do was paint, and so I went to art school because they couldn't conceive of how one would be an actor.
I grew up in central Florida in the nineteen-sixties, barefoot half the time and running around the orange groves where my father worked. I remember flocks of white birds that would lift from the backs of cattle, disturbed by the jackhammers and bulldozers clearing land for Walt Disney World.
I believe the most compelling explanation of Obama's actions is that he is, just like his father, an anti-colonialist.
My father, unusually for a PoW, talked about his experiences, but he talked about them in a very limited way.
If I tried to shout over my older brother, my mother told me keep quiet. If I tried to shout over my little sister, my father told me to shut up. I found the best way to be heard was to lower my voice and actually speak when I had something to say.
When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.
So as I was growing up, my father was always in the middle of making a film or preparing a film. It was a full-time, all-consuming type of operation.
I would hate for my father to regret all his support that he's given me over the years and be embarrassed by anything I chose to do.
Oh, it is wonderful to know that our Heavenly Father loves us - even with all our flaws! His love is such that even should we give up on ourselves, He never will.
My father was in law enforcement growing up. He was a probation officer. And I've always understood the point of view of the peace officer, you know, because of my dad.
My father died when I was nine and a half. We were on relief for two years. They call it welfare now, but it was relief then... I never forgot the generosity of New York.
My father worked in a scientific lab where he designed and built glass instruments. He was regarded as brilliant at his job and once constructed a human brain in glass just to show off his skills.
I'm a union guy; I've always been. I've been in SAG 35 years; my father was a garbage man, a sanitation man, for the city, a union guy.
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I hadn't even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break - I can't help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.
When I was 12 years old, my father was killed. I lost a loved one to violence. The pain was because I lost my father. It didn't matter that he was an officer... It shaped my life. If anything, it made me a strong advocate for the victims of violence.
Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened.
My father passed away when I was very young, so I was head of household for a very long time. Whether it came to cooking food or having to braid hair to get kids out of the door for school, I've been one that has - with the help of my mother - has been a father figure for a lot of young ladies.
My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and my parents are the most extraordinary father and mother.
Some of us live a Christian life as if we're always under the stern, watchful eye of our Father and he is very impossible to please... No, God delights even in our heartfelt attempts at obedience.
For any child, boy or girl, a father is both Jedi and Sith: Obi-Wan Kenobi - gentle and calming and good - and Vader, fierce and terrifying.
