The day that I saw Whoopi Goldberg on television, I cried so hard because I kept looking at my daddy going, 'Oh my God. There's somebody on TV that looks like me! She looks like me! Yay! I can be on TV! I can be on TV! I can do it! Look at her - look at her! She looks just like me.'

The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait - I didn't intend to get into the pathos and thrill of being a Democratic Giants fan.

I sounded like a fantasist at school when you'd go round the class, and they'd say, 'What do Mummy and Daddy do?' I was like, 'Mummy's an actress, and Daddy's a musician, and he plays his guitar with Bonnie Tyler.' And the teachers used to, like, roll their eyes, like, 'She's mental!'

Everything I've done in my career is a result of growing up in rural Oklahoma, because if I hadn't had the training from Mama and Daddy to work hard, to do what I'm told, to take directions, to mind and to do a good job at anything I set out to do, then I wouldn't be where I am today.

People send me e-mails saying, "You're a movie critic. You don't know anything about politics." Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.

I'm the bad guy on the rest of Jennifer Love Hewitt's 'The Client List,' I'm the bad guy in Renny Harlin's 'Hercules 3D,' and I'm a movie star - finally - on Showtime's new series 'Ray Donovan.' But most importantly, I'm about to be a daddy, so I'm expecting some 'Dark Circles' for real.

I got into a brawl one night in a saloon in Greenwich Village. Elia Kazan, a great director, saw me put out a couple of hecklers and figures there was some Big Daddy in me, just lyin' dormant. And out it came. People still do call me Big Daddy, but to me, inside, I'm no Big Daddy at all.

You have to make a lot of sacrifices, and the main thing you have to sacrifice is your privacy. It's funny because when I was growing up, my daddy was and still is an insurance agent in our home town. He couldn't go anywhere without somebody recognizing him or needing something from him.

I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. What people don't realize is that my father was a multimillionaire who owned 12 hotels, motels, a steel mill, a radio station, a club, nursing home, and a law office. So I think it's safe to say I'm a little above middle class and I'm a daddy's girl.

Everybody's under God's planet, and God is the Almighty, the Beginning, the End, the Alpha, the Omega. He's Big Daddy. He gives out these little soldiers and sons and angels and saints to help everybody else get through to him. I'm not the 'Jesus-only or you're going to Hell' kind of guy.

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

On the morning, Daddy and I get up at six o'clock because Christmas trees must be bought in the dark. We walk to the other end of town, as the big harbour is just the right setting for buying a Christmas tree. We spend hours choosing, looking at every branch suspiciously. It's always cold.

When my mother passed away, we knew what she wanted on her tombstone, so I asked my father, so there wouldn't be any argument among us children, 'Daddy, what do you want on your tombstone?' He thought about that. He said, 'preacher.' So that's what's going to be on his tombstone. Preacher.

I had a job to take care of my parents, to take care of some bills at the house, because my daddy wasn't working. I had to figure out how to make that all work at one time. I was working at Boston Market... I told my coach, 'I can't play football because I have to make money to help my mom.'

I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.

My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay, and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit.

I worked with Tyler before on 'Daddy's Little Girls'. He couldn't be smarter or more laid back and cool. He's always throwing out lines and is funny as hell. And he was shining his light on 'Peeples', too, lending his name to showcase Tina as a first-time director, and me as a first-time lead.

I used to not be confident. My father certainly didn't add to my confidence. When I was 17 or 18, I was voted the most beautiful girl in England by the association of press photographers. When they called Daddy for a comment, he said, 'I'm amazed. She's a nice looking girl, but nothing special.'

I had to get some things right in my personal life. And once I got my family on the same page, to understand who I am and what I do for a living, I asked my oldest daughter, 'What do you think about Daddy coming back?' And she said, 'I didn't think you were done. I want you to win the Super Bowl.'

I went through a phase when I was 13 where I would only fall in love with people over the age of 19 or 20. I never had a real relationship with any of these people, but it was definitely the guy I wanted to hang out with and wanted to go on trips with. I would be like, 'But, Daddy, he's a musician!'.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

Born Virginia Marshall but nicknamed Gig, my mother was a home economics teacher who had come all the way across the whole state of Virginia, from her home on the Eastern Shore to our little Appalachian coal town to marry my daddy, Ernest Smith, whose family had lived in these mountains for generations.

Til I was about eight or nine, I had no awareness he was anybody special. Since all our friends were in the movement, I thought what Daddy did was natural. Everybody went to jail, right? Then, one day some kids at school called my daddy a jailbird, and it upset me. That was the beginning of my awareness.

The whole time I was on 'Grey's,' I'm still reconciling myself to my 11-year-old son, because he never saw me during that time. By the time he got up, he'd see a dent in his pillow, but by the time I got home, he was already asleep. So for three years, he had a daddy that he never saw because I had to work.

There used to be a huge hole in my life that I wrote many albums about. I didn't realise it was a wife-and-daughter-shaped hole. They've plugged that gap. Everything I do, I do for them now. When daddy goes to work, it's daddy going to work, not Rob going to work. I feel like there's a purpose to everything.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.

Because my dad's Chinese-American, and they're very concrete, he said, 'There's no money to be made in literature.' So he told me to go into the sciences. And I was a good girl. And I did what Daddy said. And that's how I ended up being a doctor. But you know, you just can't stamp out that desire to tell stories.

I would want to know if, at 15, if my daughter loves me the way she does right now. And if she's proud of me, just because I want to be a good example for her, and seeing her grow and how much she loves Daddy saying 'Daddy, te quiero mucho,' which means 'I like you a lot,' those are the things that melt my heart.

I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.

I don't have 30 days and 30 nights, to show you why all the hoochies say there's nothing finer than Scott Steiner, but all I need is one night to have your wife call me for the rest of her life, the big bad booty daddy, so this goes to all my freaks out there, Big Poppa Pump is your hook up, hollar if you hear me.

I had just put the casket in the hearse and was watching it drive away, when a beautiful blond woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She said, 'Daddy, it's me — Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick.

Unless you are political or intellectual, events like the Depression are seen as personal events. We thought of the Depression as something that made the pipes freeze; we thought it hit us because Daddy didn't move his taxi stand and because he broke his hip. It was only later I found out it was a national phenomenon.

My plan was to put him on a go-kart track when he was six years-old but he was with his mum at a track in Genk and he called me up crying because he saw a younger guy driving on the track. He said to me 'Daddy, I want to do this,' so when I got home from the Canadian GP, I bought him a go-kart and that's how he started.

Before I was going to be an actress, I was going to be a veterinarian! I thought I was one as a child. I was the kid who was like, 'Daddy! I want a kitty! It needs a mommy!' And my dad was such a sucker. Every time I would beg, with tears flying down my face, about how this animal needs love, needs a home. He would cave.

We had an argument, and he told me to be home at midnight, and I said no. And so when I did come home, the door was locked. And I had gotten a set of luggage for graduation that day, and it was on the front porch, packed. He thought that he was going to prove a point and I was going to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry'.

Suddenly, stories of abuse and harassment are being believed; abusers and harassers are being toppled. Yet, at the same time, one of the top movies in the country right now is 'Daddy's Home 2,' which has a biggish, comedic part for Mel Gibson. He's the man whose anti-Semitism and racist rants became part of the cultural lore.

One of the most important times in my life was the first time that I remember seeing my daddy get onstage and play music with a bunch of guys. All of them playing something different at the same time and all becoming one, and me soaking that in at 5 years old and going, 'That's my daddy up there, and he's a part of something.'

I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.

To have so many years in the rap industry and so many number one songs, and sold so many millions of records, introduced the world to people like Cool & Dre, DJ Khaled, Pitbull, Rick Ross, Trick Daddy, Remy Ma, Big Pun, Rico Love... I could go on and on. Having been able to influence the rap game for so long is very important to me.

When my daughter was 3, she was eating Cheerios and spilled some on the table. So she swiped them onto the floor. I said, 'Darcy, what are you doing?' She said: 'Don't worry, Daddy, the robot will get it.' I didn't know whether to be horrified or proud. It was this idea that homes take care of themselves and robots are part of that.

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.

What happened with reggaeton is that many artists kept recycling the same sound. But there are a lot of reggaeton artists that are still in their prime - like Daddy Yankee - because they've chosen to continue growing, to offer people more than just reggaeton. That's where I learned to always be able to try something new and not be afraid.

To the newcomer to the south, hearing that a coworker plans a weekend visit to 'mama and them's' (the correct plural possessive, don'tchaknow), might make him think that mama has been left alone either throught an act of scoundreldom involving the town's resident hoochie-mama (an altogether different kind of mama) or Daddy's untimely demise.

We FaceTime and Skype. My two older kids got iPods for their birthdays, so they can FaceTime their dad whenever they need him. They always get a six o'clock call right after dinner, and I make sure I talk to each child. Even my 1-year-old gets on the phone and says 'Daddy.' They know my schedule by now and count the days back until I get home.

I lost my dad two years ago to cancer, and before he died, I asked him to write 'Daddy's Little Girl' on a piece of paper for me. I told him it was for an album. He practiced and practiced and then sent it to me, and I had it tattooed onto my wrist and surprised him with it. He cried when he saw it, happy tears. This way I always carry him with me.

My father told me, "Don't do anything that would bring shame to the family." I was always mindful of that. When I told him I wanted to pursue a career as an actor, my father said, "Look at what you see on television at the movies, is that what you want to be doing? Do you want to make a life out of that?" And I said, "Daddy, I'm going to change it".

With a lot of the movies that I've done, they've been both dramas and comedies from Shanghai Noon to Billy Bob Thornton's second movie, Daddy and Them, to just a bunch of movies that I have done have been comic, and they're usually from a cynical kind of pessimistic point of view which is probably my sense of humor, and this is a part of myself in everybody that I play.

My voice is my gift. And Pops had me using it in the right way. I had many offers to sing pop, to sing rhythm and blues. Pops said "Mavis, this record company want to give you a million dollars." I said, "No daddy, I want to sing with the family." And I did. I never wanted to branch out by myself. But I've had to now. It's my mission. I've been left here to do it. And I'm grateful.

Back in the days when I was a teenager, Before I had status and before I had a pager, You could find The Abstract listening to hip-hop, My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop, I said, well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles, The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin' like Michael, It's all expected, things are for the lookin', If you got the money, Quest is for the bookin'...

I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.

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