I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. I was all set to take up a brewing job in Scotland when a chance encounter with an Irish entrepreneur led me to set up a biotech business in India instead.
In 1986, I was asked by the then-Dean of Science at the University of British Columbia, Dr. R.C. Miller, Jr., to establish a new interdisciplinary institute, the Biotechnology Laboratory. I decided that it was time for me to start paying back for the thirty years of fun that I had been able to have in research.
Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.
Each and every time I went in for IVF treatments, I knew there was a bipartisan group of Congresswomen praying for me, and I was honored that the same group was there at my baby shower.
My dad's about character and bipartisanship and something greater than yourself and believing in this country and believing in the fact that we as Americans can still come together, and that's something I grew up in and feeds me every day.
I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I'm not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.
I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a day. It's like being a diabetic.
So when I was 24, someone suggested to me that I was bipolar, and I thought that was ridiculous. I just thought he was trying to get out of treating me. But he was also responding to the chaotic nature of my life.
I'm open about having bipolar disorder. I'm open about being of mixed race. I'm open about being bisexual, and I have this wantingness to talk about it, and for me, it's about more than being a role model for any specific community.
Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial - it's been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable.
I've got an image of me at the bottom of my garden sitting under my silver birch tree reading, while everyone else had gone somewhere exotic.
My well-meaning parents decided to send me to a Catholic grade school to get a better education than I probably would have received at the local public school. They had no way of knowing that the school nuns, who were the majority of the teachers at this particular parochial school, were right-wing, card-carrying John Birch Society members.
Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!
We didn't have movies in this little mining town. When I was 12 my mom took me to New York and I saw Bye Bye Birdie, with people singing and dancing, and that was it.
I called my mom sobbing when Birdie was a few months old and said, 'I'm sorry. All this time, I had no idea how much you loved me.'
I wasn't originally taking drama, but the drama teacher asked me to audition for Bye, Bye Birdie. I did and got the lead role. Initially I was kind of scared, but once I did it I got bitten by the bug and loved it.
Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.
I love my home state and my hometown. I'm so grateful to Birmingham and Alabama for what it made me.
My upbringing in Birmingham gave me a sense of reality. I could not pick another city I would rather have grown up in. Growing up around really good, solid, godly people, it helped me to find those kind of great people in L.A., too, which can be hard for some people.
If you were asked to go on 'Mastermind,' what would your specialist subject be? I wouldn't have a clue what I could answer questions on. Birmingham City Football Club would be a start, I suppose, but with a hundred odd years of history, thousands of matches, players and incidents to recall, even access to Google would leave me struggling.
