I was fortunate enough to have my kids early, so being a mom always ended up being a better gig than these other parts that came along. So I always justified not really working a lot because I had a family.
In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.
When I came back from filming 'Abduction', I told my agent: I'm staying in London now. If it takes doing children's theater from the back of a van in Kilburn, that's OK. I need to be with my family. My job is to keep the family together and provide f...
My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'
I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.
I learned in America that Americans are into results. Americans don't care where you came from, what your family did, what school you graduated from. They care about if you can deliver the results. That's what makes America the country it is.
Jeff Kinney is tall and has a great smile, but don't be fooled, he's as slick as they come. A real player. And how he came up with a book that appeals to kids ages 8-13 baffles me. He's an unbelievably kind man with a great family.
All my family has very good mathematical abilities - like, so dorky. I was the dork then in school - on any maths exams I'd get 100%. I just knew how to do maths and most people would hate it, but for some reason it just came.
In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work - the hay in the summertime, for example.
My parents made it a point that, although I was born and raised in New York City, I needed to speak Spanish because they wanted me to be able to communicate with my elders when I went to Santo Domingo or when my family came to visit from Cuba.
I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.
My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the m...
Nothing was planned in my career. I just went with the flow and took everything that came to me. Selling potato chips was obvious, as it was a family business. When friends suggested I should try theatre, I gave it a shot. Then I did a lot of adverti...
Our co-founder and company president, Jim Levy, came from a record industry background and understood the marketing and promotion of artists as well as products. So the video game business went from absolutely zero designer credit to something approa...
One thing I can take credit for, along with the rest of show business, is when the red ribbons were out, we cured AIDS. Any advancements that came towards fighting AIDS were not done by scientists or doctors - it was people with little ribbons on the...
When my brother and me got into performing in the late '40s and early '50s, it was a sensational opportunity to learn from our elders. Every show we played had a dancer, a comic, a juggler, a singer, an acrobat. I came to appreciate virtuosity in all...
The stores and the things like that, the business side of things came out at the point when, I'd say probably in the early '70s, it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over, 'cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.
I've never chased fame. I came into this business to be a theatre actress. I was nine when I first appeared on stage. But I can't say I would turn my back on fortune. I'm someone who enjoys the benefits of money.
I watch a TV show called 'Shark Tank.' It's one of my favorite TV shows. It's basically self-made millionaires who have either come up with their own business or clothing... I came up with the idea of designing clothes.
I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlle...
The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different re...
