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When I was 19 years old, both of my parents died in the same year; my mom of cancer and my dad in a car accident. Through the next two or three years and a series of bad decisions - all my own, I might add - I ended up literally homeless, before that was even a word. I even slept occasionally under a pier on the Gulf Coast.
I had a big fight in my first week in secondary school. There was a kid in the year above who was nasty to me, and we ended up having a scrap. I can remember thinking that there was going to be some serious bloodshed if we didn't stop, so I made a decision to walk away. It was a difficult thing to do, but the most sensible.
Famine emerges from a lack of interlocal trade; when one locality's food crop fails, since there is virtually no trade with other localities, the bulk of the people starve. It is precisely the permeation of the free market throughout the world that has virtually ended this scourge of famine by permitting trade between areas.
Many Japanese families moved to Taiwan during the occupation. Then, when the war ended, they were forced to move back. And at the macro level, the Taiwanese had every reason to cheer when the Japanese left. The Japanese military could often be incredibly brutal. The Taiwanese lived as second-class citizens on their own land.
Well, I kind of did the math in my head when I was like, 9. I was like, 'Well, if I want to make films' - because I want to be a director - 'I could just go on a film set and learn there.' And then I ended up falling in love with acting and the set and making friends all the time. And so I've just been doing that ever since.
Diagnosed incidentally with stage IV, grade 4 metastatic renal cell carcinoma, I had bone metastases in my femur (which eventually fractured), ulna, and cranium; five metastases in my lungs; and muscle metastases in my thigh and tongue. Yet six months after diagnosis, my treatment ended: I've not had a drop of anything since.
Whenever I wore a bathing suit, I kept a sarong around my hips that went halfway down my thighs. The tops of my thighs are like baby skin. Where the sarong ended, I can see sun damage: I've got dark spots and places where there is no melanin. The spots are not pretty, so I encourage everyone to protect their skin from the sun.
The 'Law & Order' audition was so last-minute. I was already in a shabby suit, the journey was a complete disaster, my train stopped early, it was raining, and I had to show the cabbie the way... I rushed in apologising, gave this terrible reading, and ended up telling my whole journey to them. I must have bored them to tears.
I came here when I was 20. I came to go to school, but I ended up working for Halston as an assistant. That happened in a very strange way. My father had a meeting with Halston. And my father said to me, 'Join me. I want you to meet this amazing American designer.' And I happened to just tag along, and Halston offered me a job.
I remember getting hit in the ribs when I was on about eight or nine in my first game, and everyone rushed over, quite concerned. The umpire said to me afterwards, 'If anyone had appealed I would have had to give you out LB!' I ended that innings about nine not out off about 15 overs. I was already digging in - Yorkshire style.
Live-action has always been my focus and my passion. I love voice-over, and I definitely could see myself doing some voice-over, as much as I could, and even if I ended up doing only that for the rest of my life, and I could be successful at it, that would be great. But I think my real dream is to do films and live-action films.
I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.
In my mid-twenties, I said to myself: 'I can't perform anymore!' I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't perform for a while, then ended up doing a one-woman show about Gilda Radner having cancer. It was called 'Gilda Defying Gravity,' and I did it on the Lower East Side. It was great; people really came out and supported me.
When I graduated from high school, I weighed 125 pounds because of wrestling. Suddenly, I realized I could eat whatever I wanted - plus, creatine was new at the time. I went from 125 to 175 pounds, working out like crazy. I was yoked. But I wasn't drinking enough fluids and ended up with a kidney stone - and 3 weeks of pure hell.
I was once dressed as a mermaid for a Jean Paul Gaultier show. My legs were bound into a fish tail, so I had to come down the runway on crutches. Halfway down, I was supposed to unzip the fish tail to reveal my legs, but the zipper broke, so I ended up stabbing my fake nail through the fabric of the zipper and ripping my way out.
I lived in South Africa until I was 11 when we first immigrated. My mom had sent me back there when I was 14 for summer vacation. I wasn't doing very well in school, my grades were slipping. I called my mom one day and told her that I wasn't coming back. I ended up staying there until I was 17 before coming back to North America.
I'm just one woman away, my mother, from being the same as Mike Tyson. I would've ended up like him if my mama had not been so tough and strong. A lot of people, including Mike, don't know I came from the ghetto. They think I'm too nice and proper. But that's the way my mama raised me - to look people in the eye and respect them.
Sometimes the person that is best for you is the person right under your nose. I wanted to have a girlfriend in high school, and I know I would have treated a girl well, but instead I was just friends with a lot of girls. They ended up telling me later on, 'We're so perfect together,' but at the time, I wasn't the cool-enough guy.
I have chronic - well, I like to call it late-stage Lyme disease and not chronic, because I like to think someday I'll be all the way cured. It took me a really long time to get diagnosed, and I was misdiagnosed for a long, long time. I was very ill during the end of Le Tigre, which was kind of why that ended, amongst other things.
My mum enrolled me in this free dance class because I had so much energy in the night-time, and she just wanted me to go to sleep. I ended up falling in love with dancing, singing, acting, the whole entertainment world. Then, my mum ended up taking on an extra job so she could fund me to take singing lessons or go to drama classes.
I was studying communications and acting, and I decided over the summer that I wanted to work on my acting skills and perform in a pageant. I didn't have any other way of practicing, so I entered the Miss Rhode Island pageant. I ended up wearing a dress that was a $20 rental. It was too short, and there was a hole in the back of it.
We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.
After 'The Wonder Years,' I ended up having a voiceover career, which was something I never even knew was possible. But after the character I was playing on 'The Wonder Years,' people said, 'Oh, would you like to do a Burger King thing? And there's a 7 Up thing...' And then I got to do 'Dilbert.' I think my voice kind of fit for that.
I went down to Venezuela and ended up renting a helicopter and flew with my sons to the tops of the tepuis, these freestanding jungle mesas, 'lost worlds' as it were. In fact, it's almost impossible to access them without one. So we were able to land and spend some time there. We were trapped for about six hours by clouds that came in.
From being a little girl in the projects, going through all of the mess that I was going through, to ending up at the Inauguration for the first African-American president, I'm speechless right now because I never thought I'd - I never ever - I couldn't even see that far. Even when I ended up in the music business, I couldn't see that.
What's really important for us is that our home base is in L.A., and when we move to Toronto - where 'Suits' is filmed - we move as a unit and are always together in the same place. My 5-year-old goes to two schools, which I was worried about, but it ended up being an amazing, self-esteem-building experience for her. She celebrates it.
I had been wrestling with a fracture in my elbow and a slight tear in my triceps for quite some time, but it was continuing to get worse. As I worked through it, I ended up dislocating my shoulder and tearing my labrum. All of these injuries were on the same arm, so things like working out or even sleeping became increasingly difficult.
I always try to say what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, and without fear of what others will say or think, and that's how I've always lived. Sometimes, this has ended up hurting me, and other times, it has helped me, but I think you can never forget who you are, and I've always been myself, and that one of the things I'm most proud of.
I had an audition for Mary Jane Watson in 'Spiderman' and ended up playing Betty Brant in that series. I auditioned for Amy Adams' role in 'Catch Me If You Can' and, you know, ended up playing the bank teller. So there were a lot of times early on where I felt like I was always sort of the bridesmaid, never the bride - never quite right.
Neil Armstrong was no Christopher Columbus. In most respects, he was better. Unlike the famous fifteenth century seafarer, Armstrong knew where he landed. He also spent his time in public service, not in jail, and his passing was marked by world-wide encomiums. He ended his days as a celebrated explorer rather than a royal inconvenience.
And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.
When I first came in the business, I had a couple of close calls on planes going to London for shows. There was one time where the plane had to fly around until a storm ended, and then we started having a question about fuel, so we had to go through the storm. It was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. That really messed me up.
I do love science fiction, but it's not really a genre unto itself; it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done, I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another, so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big, mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.
I'm getting a lot of stick because my character in 'Young Dracula' wanted to be vampire, so now that I am a vampire, everyone's like, 'You finally did it!' But it's cool and I loved doing 'Young Dracula.' That show's finished and I don't know why it ended, so it was brilliant to go into 'Being Human,' which is like the adult version of it.
I want to be an example of a guy who made something of himself out of nothing. A guy who overcame the odds of a tough childhood, who worked hard, who didn't let his surroundings get the best of him and lead him to jail or the graveyard. Where I ended up - being a comedian, a TV star, and a movie actor - might be unique, but my story is not.
I didn't read many comics as a kid - I've always been a really fast reader, and I would fly through a comic book in a few minutes and be so mad that it ended so quickly. But now that I've been in the business, I tend to look at the panels so much more carefully, and realize that so much of it is about the art; I don't think I got that before.
He presented himself as the friend to Main Street America, and yet that aw-shucks persona ended up packaging policies and programs that were at times deeply injurious to the very people he swore to serve. After all, Reaganomics set in motion one of the largest wealth redistributions in American history, away from the poor and toward the rich.
When I first came to Columbia University, I was dirt poor. I did not choose to come here - I just ended up here because I had nowhere else to go, having just escaped from China after Tiananmen. I was in a new country where I didn't understand the language, didn't know anybody, and didn't have a penny to my name. So I was desperate and afraid.
'All-Star Wonder Woman' would get worked on in what is laughably referred to as my 'spare time.' I just ended up with less and less time to devote to it. Eventually, we all realized that it was taking forever, so we just all agreed to hold off on it 'til the time was right to do it properly. Well, I still have a contract; DC never tore it up.
I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche - a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress. I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely, and double-majoring in theater and international relations.
There came a point sometime during high school when I started thinking about exploring acting as a career, but it was more of an intention than an actual decision. I was very interested in a lot of different subjects, but every time I envisioned myself actually pursuing one as a career, I always ended up thinking that I would rather be acting.
When I was 9, I auditioned for an arts school in Toronto with a few of my friends. The sole reason we auditioned was that we found out you got to miss a couple days of school to do the audition. Without actually wanting to go to arts school, I accidentally got in. My parents encouraged me to try it, and I ended falling in love with performing.
I followed a girl I met in Japan to Los Angeles and ended up working in a motorcycle store. I quit the job one night, went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and ended up yelling at a bunch of people. Someone saw me yelling and asked me to be in a play. The first night, there was an agent in the audience who took me on and sent me out for jobs.
Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn't know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn't even smell like smoke.
O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.
I am quite international. My background, born in Turkey. My family is a Jewish family from Iran, so I went from Turkey to Iran to Israel, and then grew up in Italy and ended up in U.S. for graduate school. So I tend to look at things from an international perspective, and I think that gives you a little bit of a broader view of what's going on.
I was the center on our fraternity team, but I was a center-eligible, so I was known for my ability to go out, and I was pretty sure-handed catching a pass in the flat about ten yards down the field. My father played high school football and was pretty good. He also played center, so I always relished the idea that we both ended up playing center.
I went to L.A., and I was on two different studio movies at Fox and Sony, but they were never made in the end. When the second one wasn't happening, I ended up doing an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for the BBC, and went on a roots trip from England to Kenya, India, and pre-partition India in Pakistan, where my family originally came from.