I did some plays in high school. Yes. Never took it that seriously. My parents, however, wanted me to go to college. My grades weren't exactly spectacular so they figured acting might be a necessary back door into some school.
My parents are my backbone. Still are. They're the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.
Confidence was the backbone of my upbringing. I was an only child, so I was spoilt, loved, and given an enormous amount of confidence by my parents.
Bias has to be taught. If you hear your parents downgrading women or people of different backgrounds, why, you are going to do that.
My parents had a difficult divorce. My dad had to take a backseat for a few years, and my grandfather came in. He was also my inspiration for becoming an actor. I really respected him.
My parents came from Russia and suddenly they wound up in Boston, Massachusetts, Brookline, Massachusetts and they felt the sun rose and set on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's backside because he meant so much to them. This was freedom. This was something totally different from the Russia they had left.
Growing up, my parents loved Bon Jovi and Boston and Rush and all that, but it wasn't really connecting with me. I was still in my boy-band phase - Backstreet Boys for life!
Ever since I was maybe nine or 10 years old, I'd say, 'I'm gonna be an actor, and I'm gonna go to Julliard, and I'm gonna be in movies.' My parents never said, 'What's your backup plan?'
My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
I was raised by vegan parents, and we ate out of my backyard garden for my whole life.
When you're around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you're supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.
My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub.
My dad? He died when I was 19, which is a bad time for your dad to die, because there's an awful lot of things you have to resolve with your parents past your teens if you've been a difficult teenager.
Most children turn out badly because they have the wrong parental image. This doesn't mean their parents are criminal. It means they are boring and cruel.
Even though I played national level badminton, I told my parents when I was in 10th that I was not interested in continuing. Being a model or actor fascinated me from a young age, and I even did a couple of ads when I was just eight years old.
My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.
I had a hard-scrabble childhood with my parents. I have a lot of baggage. To come down to the footlights and accept the audience's affection inside a Broadway theater - that didn't come easily to me.
When I grew up on the south side of Chicago, it was kind of a rough neighborhood, and when my parents saw the prospect of my older sister going to middle school, high school, they decided that we would move to the north side of Chicago, Highland Park, and for me, that was a whole new ballgame.
You must remember that anyone under 30 - especially a ballplayer - is an adolescent. I never got close to being an adult until I was 32. Even though I was married and had a son at 20, I was a kid at 32, living at home with my parents. Sure, I was a manager then. That doesn't mean you're grown up.
I would literally climb out of the cradle while my parents slept, go and crawl off. I did this a couple of times apparently. I'd cross the road and into someone's house, wake them up banging pots and pans in the kitchen.
