I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he's innocent.
My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.
The picture has made its million back in four months; I have been overwhelmed by letters, hundreds of them, literally, begging me in my next production not to swing over the shallow trash of mother love, father love, sister love, brother love.
I absolutely love the fact that they are looking out for me and it's not really even just Charles and Dave. Out on the road, I'm one of very few girls out here. There's a lot of pseudo big brothers who are keeping an eye out on me.
People are always coming up to me and saying, 'I love you, love your work.' And then the next sentence is, 'I loved your brother.' John made people laugh, and laughter is a powerful thing.
For any actor, when you're playing twin brothers, you have to be able to find the similarities between them as well as creating a difference between the two characters. If they just looked the same, what would the point of that be?
My brothers and I grew up on stories about our grandfather building one-room schoolhouses and about our grandparents' courtship and their early lives together in Indian Territory.
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
I always performed when I was a child. My parents got very annoyed, because my brother and I had our little bedrooms upstairs, and I would plaster the house with posters with arrows pointing upstairs.
What's right with America and what's right with Islam have a lot in common. At their highest levels, both worldviews reflect an enlightened recognition that all of humankind shares a common Creator - that we are, indeed, brothers and sisters.
I was always the Doubting Thomas of the bunch, and I don't think I was convinced about the Allman Brothers until 'Fillmore East' hit - that one removed all doubt!
The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.
When I visit my brother in South Africa, I order things I've only seen in zoos. Little deers and kudu, all the mammals you would never think of eating.
I had sort of exhausted all the avenues playing in Detroit. So again, through the stewardship of my brother, I ended up in California and went to the Musicians Institute in L.A. I wanted to get better as a player.
We didn't have much, but I was raised to believe if you had books, you had a lot. My grandfather and my parents made me and my twin brother Kiel read at least a book a week.
The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.
There's no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don't you think?
I generally wake up, exercise and read through a huge amount of newspapers. I get to the office somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 - my brothers and I are always the first ones in.
My brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old.
I played recorder in assembly, then I became passionate about the guitar, I don't know why. I started on electric then moved to acoustic - my brother was playing bass in the next room.
Two brothers and a sister, my niece, my nephew... we're a very small group. We're very close, very tight-knit. We spend every holiday weekend together.
