My parents, the effect that [Frank Sinatra] had on the Italian community, in terms of all our friends at the house were multicultural. We weren't just Italians. My dad's close friend was a black gentleman - this was back in the early 50s when Tony Bennett was reprimanded for having lunch, when he was in the military, with a black man.

I was often looked at as a leper by kids at school because I was a Jehovah's Witness. They didn't like it - you were 'weird'. And on Saturday mornings, you'd be knocking at their doors. I remember standing there with my mum and dad, thinking, 'Oh my God, I know whose door this is, and I'll have to see them on Monday.' It was terrible.

My dad's an actor. Ever since I was little, I'd watch him do it, and I was always very into it. I got into when I was about two years old. I started out with print work, doing modeling and stuff. Then I got into commercials and TV. Once I started, I loved doing it. It's just something that I've continuted over the years, and I love it.

I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family, and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like... 'and the old man who lived in these woods...' I would then run back into the camper terrified.

Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself.

A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree. Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.

Rafe grinned. "So we are dating?" "No. You have to pass the parental exam first. It'll take you awhile to compile the data. They'd like it in triplicate." I turned to my parents. "We have Kenji. We have my cell phone. Since we aren't officially dating, I'm sure you'll agree that's all the protection we need." Dad chocked on his coffee.

Food is, for me, for everybody, a very sexual thing and I think I realised that quite early on. I still cannot exaggerate how just putting a meal in front of somebody is really more of a buzz for me than anything. And I mean anything. Maybe that goes back to trying to please my dad, I don't know. It's like parenting in a way I suppose.

Our shows have always been sort of an all-generations thing, people from 6 to 60. The other night, we played a show and we had a woman who was probably 70 to 75 years old, and she was there alone and she was singing every song. On the other end of the spectrum, there was a 7-year-old on his dad's shoulders and the dad is singing along.

OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55.

Growing up, I was lucky that my dad was never out of work. I was very fortunate in one way: that I never experienced real hardship, because my dad is this real dynamo. He was always working, so I had a sense of the ups and downs and endless disappointments, but at the same time I was never worried that we couldn't eat or pay the bills.

As a kid who wasn't into sports, at school I felt almost alienated at times, whereas in the theatre community there was this amazing sense of camaraderie. Early on, we would go to rehearsals with my dad and I was like the mascot for the backstage crew. That was a big part of my childhood, so I dreamed of one day doing a play in London.

As a little kid, not only is my dad Jo-Jo White, but M. L. Carr is involved in the family, Red Auerbach is my godfather, and my stepmother was an Olympic-caliber sprinter. Athletes were all around. I happened to be a natural athlete. If I wasn't, it might have been hell. But I never got any pressure from my mom and dad to be an athlete.

I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?' And I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'

I grew up in Texas, and people love their American-made muscle cars there. I grew up around people who loved cars and took care of cars and my dad's a big car nut, so I learned a little bit about cars - how to love them, most importantly. I think that from the time I could remember, I've always envisioned myself in a vintage muscle car.

My dad kept me away from people who treat children wrong. It's just amazing that there is such a way to raise a person without giving them complexes. But nobody does it. They think it should be the old school. But look at the products. Wouldn't it be great if you could avoid the complexes? Then you could deal with the complexes of life.

Real people are good and grumpy. They're nice and mean. And I come from a nice and mean family. My mom was nice, and my dad was mean. So I would've served myself a lot better if Louie Lundgren would've blown up at some of the people he was talking to. I think it would've really served everybody better. We'd probably still be on the air!

I don't really look at stats or whatever. You see them on the big screen. But other than that, I don't pay too much attention to it. I did know about my dad's home run total. Other than that, I don't like to know. It's pointless. Whether you know or don't know, you don't want to think about it. You just want to go out and play the game.

My dad was a really good surfer, and by the time I was 10, he was dragging me out on some good days at Bells. I'd reckon they were solid, 6-foot days, and he'd tell me to wait on the shoulder. I'd see him coming through the barrel, and he'd just scream at me to go. I'd drop in, and he'd give me a hoot from behind - I've always loved it.

Since I stayed in a colony where either one was an engineer or a scientist, everybody thought I would be a scientist. This was the expectation everybody had apart from my parents. Honestly, I, too, wanted to be a scientist. I think it was the way Dad would explain us scientific theories and concepts that made the subject more intriguing.

I hang out with my dad mostly, my dad was in the military. He's at that age now where his war stories and other stories have blended together, so now you don't know what he's talking about. One time, we were surrounded, then we ran out of ammo, then we were fighting hand-to-hand, then we started dancing, and that's how I met your mother.

This is a jury of your peers. They watch the same TV movies. They belong to Oprah’s Book Club. You can take any monster, slap a bad dad into his past, and all of a sudden he’s just another lost soul, lashing out. And you were the poor lady that got in the way. They’ll argue you lacked compassion. You were the one who took things too far.

I'll tell you something: my dad was a nuclear engineer and he was really bright, and I've always said that because of negotiating at such a young age with my dad, it was really such a gift because I could then negotiate with very difficult personalities - and not end up being the scapegoat. I learned to really pick and choose my battles.

Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?” His eyes flashed. “Got any to spare?” I could’ve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idiot. Come to the Keep with me, be my princess. Mourn me when your crazy dad kills me. Yeah, right.

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.

My dad worked for Del Monte and then for Monsanto as one of the chief scientists on the Calgene Flavr Savr Tomato. But it was a huge disaster because the tomato didn't taste good. And then my dad started his own genetics company and I began doing that with him. He and I ran a genetics company for 10 years. And so I sold seeds to Florida.

So yeah, when I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21, and we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it.

Rory is very established in England, which you are seeing right now with Bond. But his father Roy Kinnear was a very, very beloved comedy actor here in the UK. And Rory actually even looks a bit like his dad. And so it makes a lot of sense to me that Rory has such good comic chops because it's in his blood. He's very, very funny as Sean.

I used to be really nervous when I sang. Like, when I was a kid starting young, 18 and 19, and my dad really had to sort of push me to start singing in front of people. Ever since I got out there and really started doing it, the only thing I've ever tried to do is just sort of is be myself, you know, never put on a voice. Sing naturally.

My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten, and I didn't live with him after that, though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer; I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It occurred to me then that my dad was kind of special; he's still one of my favorite writers.

I have very good advice to give to kids this age, which is, you shouldn't listen to your mum or dad and you just have to work it out for yourself. And the reason I've taken the age range down this year, and I never would have done it 10 years ago, is what I've seen with the success of Willow Smith. You don't have to be so cutesy anymore.

I think the last few weeks for me have been just a very different emotional experience. Something I never thought I would feel myself. And I find...a lot of things affect me differently now. As any new parent knows, you're only too happy to show off your new child and, you know, proclaim that he is the best looking or the best everything.

I had been on another procedural show, 'Cold Case,' for seven years, and I certainly respected the legacy of 'Law & Order,' even though I had only seen a handful of episodes. Being a dad meant the reality was that I probably knew more about Dora and Diego. But I saw the show with fresh eyes, and I wasn't coming in with a bunch of baggage.

I was so lucky. I had a dad and a mom that loved me and my sisters so much. My Uncle Mike and Uncle Frank were married. They must be together for fortysomething years now. Long story short, there was never any stigma attached to that. At the youngest age, I remember my dad saying, "Sometimes men love men and women love women. It's nature.

Growing up in Georgia, my dad was a farmer and we worked in agriculture, so we were always looking up at the sky, checking if rain was in the forecast. That always set the tone for the mood in my household, whether we had rain coming in or not - we knew the crops would be good and it was going to be a good week around the Bryan household.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

My dad, who was a teacher, used to tell me that a teacher's goal should be for every one of their students to get an A. If that's your goal every day - to make every student or player learn - then it doesn't matter if you won last year or didn't win. When next year's team shows up, I try to help every player become as good as they can be.

Surrogate fathers and other male figures stepped in to give guidance after my dad died. Businessmen taught me to honor my commitments; others gave me opportunities beyond my wildest imaginations. Authors and speakers set good, solid examples of high standards and lofty goals for me; mature, committed Christians nurtured and instructed me.

Oh, good lord, Jeff. Don't go getting all emotional on me. I've been getting it from my mom, my dad, my sister, the freaking MAILMAN--I don't need it from you, too. All I ask is that you promise me one thing.' 'What?' 'Just water the plants while I'm gone, all right?' 'You don't have plants, Tad.' 'I know. I just always wanted to say that.

My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.

My dad, as a guy, had to quit school in the ninth grade, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And spent his life pushing wheel barrels of heavy wet cement. So we've gone from pushing cement to now in one generation pushing legislation. But we always want any president to succeed, to do well; that means America does well and Americans do well.

If I'm a young mom or young dad, I can find a great source of strength. God has promised that He will help me to be the mom or dad that He wants me to be. He has promised to be with me every step of the way. He has promised that He will never leave me or forsake me. These are wonderful promises that I can learn to trust and build a life on.

My engineer dad is where my technical acumen comes from. I remember him taking me to the factories to see how what works. Often he used to open up his motorbike to fix things and I saw how the wheels worked. His car used to be open for dissection very regularly. All this taught me and inspired me to look beyond what I could see on the skin.

I really wished he hadn't made me hate to read the Bible. Having it shoved down my throat all my life had made me bitter toward reading it. I believed it, but my dad had used it to his benefit too many times and ignored the parts in there that would point out his wrongs. Like judging Beau without even knowing him. That was in the Bible too.

We were like the Beatles, Dad.' 'I know you think that, sweetie' 'Seriously. Mom is John, you're Paul, I'm George, and Ice Cream is Ringo.' 'Ice Cream,' I said. 'Resentful of the past, fearful of the future...everytime we saw Ice Cream sitting there with her mouth open, we'd say, Poor Ice Cream, resentful of the past, fearful of the future.

We need to show how we really are and how we really are is that I'm the Dad, that's the Mom, these are the kids. This is how you respect us. It's "Yes Sir", "No Sir", "Yes Mam" and "No Mam". We don't see a lot of that on TV, so I just want to give an example and show examples on how a family should be versus how families are portrayed on TV.

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 was talking to my dad about the stuff he grew up listening to, and 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a record that he had always talked about around the house. He always talked about it as the 'greatest concept album of all time.' One day, I started listening to it, and it just hit me. I was like, 'These songs are all hits. They're all huge songs.'

I think it's a confusing, tough thing. I mean, I can imagine in this situation. Being a single dad myself now and trying to do the right thing in your children's eyes and in the eyes of your friends and family and all that and then at the other end of the spectrum, you're also trying to date and you want to be yourself and you want to let go.

My mother was born in the city, my dad was an immigrant. Probably from Germany. Could have been Austria, could have been Poland. The borders were changing. My dad brought over a large family of Shatners when he was very young. Scraped together the money, got 11 brothers and sisters a passage on the boat. There's a lot of Shatners in Montreal.

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