There were times at the start of it all when I would be standing, terrified, in front of the cameras and people I considered 'real' actors. I had no idea what was happening, what the guy with the clipboard did, or if people in the studio were looking at me because it was their job to look at me or because they thought I was making a mess of things.
'All in With Laila Ali' is educational, inspirational, compelling programming profiling individuals that have reached for the sky, pushed themselves to the limit and did things that you would think were impossible.
While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
I really enjoyed working on 'Dumb & Dumberer' with Cheri Oteri, maybe because we are both into improvisations. We were meant to act together.
I have a memory of this experience when I was young, watching 'Stop Making Sense,' the Talking Heads concert movie, which is one of the best concert movies ever, and I saw it in a full house in New Zealand, and everyone was cheering between songs, and you really felt like you were part of the audience at the gig.
I'll tell you one big misconception. Cops never say 'Freeze!' It might be misinterpreted. They might think you were, like, ordering fries. Or that you had fleas.
While my friends were outside practising to be Tony Hawk or Michael Jordan, I was inside playing Mozart, increasingly disillusioned and bored.
I love to work with artists that were able to find a brand new name and create something really exciting and fresh.
I'm intelligent enough to survive happily and be compassionate. If I were too smart, I would realize all the ills of the world.
TV drama - not always, but on the whole - were pretty appalling and very secondary, too. No one expected it to be like watching a movie; that was the point. But I think when you start watching 'Vikings,' it is like watching a movie - you're taken somewhere else.
I went through a really good-looking phase from birth to 9. And then things went crazy. I don't know what happened, but between 9 and 14 it was really, really rough. I didn't have a lot of friends. The only ones who were nice to me were the theater kids. And they were like, 'You can come and join us. No one likes us.'
Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.
We were poor, but we didn't know it. There were no government bureaus in those days presuming to determine where poorness begins and ends, but I don't remember ever being hungry.
I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table.
My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.
I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.
On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur war broke out between a coalition of Arab states and Israel. At 6 A.M. that morning, Kissinger, asleep in the Waldorf, was taken by surprise by the Arab attack - as were the CIA and the rest of the world.
I grew up in a very urban, bohemian family where everyone was a hippie or a pacifist. It was artistically and intellectually stimulating, but they were definitely not into outdoor sports or activities.
You get stared at the whole time. I first noticed that when I was about 13. I was very shy. Being considered beautiful, I always felt that people were waiting for something more. I imagined you were supposed to have an intellectual ability - and I'm making no claims here - proportional to your supposed good looks.
The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts - we have learned only recently how close we were to war - but I knew enough to make me tremble.
More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.
I missed a lot of family weddings and funerals because we were out on the road and had these big gigs, and you can't pull out of these gigs at the last minute because too many people are counting on it. It got to the point where I was consumed with that.
Playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar was the most thrilling thing I've done. You get these speeches that were written for men, and you're running around like an action hero, climbing scaffolding and beating people up. It was very freeing.
If you had the most prestige and you were the network that everybody turned to in times of a crisis, that that was the most important position, in the news business, to hold.
I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.
Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever.
I watched so many comic book movies where the actors weren't as built as the characters in the book. It made me mad because they didn't look right.
For 'Breaking Bad,' people were with Walter White for 99% of that show, even though that guy is a monster.
I've always wondered what it would be like if the Messiah, or Christ Returned, were actually alive and living in our society; who would that person be, how we would identify them, how would they live and what would they believe in, how would society react to them? I decided to try and tell my idea of that story.
I've been writing since I was 10 or 11. I started with poetry because that was the easiest thing. It just kind of came naturally. I think at that time West Coast hip hop was huge; all these kids around me were like, 'I want to be a rapper.' But I'm a white girl, not going to be a rapper.
William Holden and I weren't just good friends. He was my very best friend. I feel his loss very much still.
When they were making black films in the '60s and the '70s, everyone knew their place, if you get my drift. You understand? Everyone knew the rules, and everyone knew their place. Everyone knew what to say. They had the written rules in Hollywood film, and the unwritten rules.
I went a few times, but I felt there was no way that any therapist could understand my particular torment and also felt in some respects they were sicker than I was.
In terms of Hurricane Sandy, I really do see some hopeful grassroots responses, particularly in the Rockaways, where people were very organized right from the beginning, where Occupy Sandy was very strong, where new networks emerged.
I've been influenced by some of the greatest designers. Charles Eames. And Bruno Munari in the '50s in Italy - when they had to retool the industry of war into an industry to help society. In a way, I'm influenced by designers that were there at a radical time of change.
Some people criticize North Koreans and ask, 'Are they stupid? How can they believe those ridiculous things?' But I say, It doesn't matter if you're smart: if you were born in North Korea, you would be exactly like us. We don't know what freedom is. We have never enjoyed it.
