I was a contact hitter my whole career but I learned how to handle the ball inside. And Ted Williams played a big part in that. He gave me the advice on how to handle inside pitches.
Being part of a fraternity has given me the foundation for everything I do in my career from the loyalty to the determination; it laid the foundation for everything I've been able to enjoy. I'm heavily involved with Omega Psi Phi.
My career has always kind of moved forward and upward. I've never had anything kind of stall out or go in the opposite direction. I've always kind of been moving in the right direction.
I still dream about everything I achieved. I dream about my career, dream about playing baseball, meeting so many people, traveling so much.
It hurts. Frankly, it hurts terribly. I have just lived one of the biggest loss of my career. It will be difficult to digest that moment. It is extremely hard to accept. I am disappointed.
I want to be one of the youngest actors ever to direct a feature. That would be a nice thing to hear. It might prove to be a bigger challenge than I can take, but that's the career I want, like George Clooney.
For me, when I picture the person I want to end up with, I don't think about what their career is, or what they look like. I picture the feeling I get when I'm with them.
Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'
Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.
Randy Wittman told me not to shoot 3-pointers. That got me very uncomfortable. There were certain labels tagged on me very early in my career, spots on the floor where I felt uncomfortable.
I wouldn't want to be a superstar, like Julia Roberts or Madonna, and be on the cover of 'US' magazine when I'm twenty - that's how you know you're really hot. I'd rather have a long, respected career.
My father was a brew master. He was the one who I was very close to, he influenced me in many many ways including my pursuing a career as a brew master.
Filming 'The Road to Riches' was surprisingly difficult for me. I learned that going back to career successes and failures can be emotionally exhausting as you are forced to revisit the euphoric highs and painful lows in high speed.
My singing is really important to me, but when children come along they'll be my main focus. I'd never put my career in front of my babies - it'd be a case of fitting jobs around them.
The first six years of my career, I got more comments on my weight than on my singing. So I think I became so self-conscious that I started working on it harder.
There were times, sure, I wanted my career to go better. But once it starts to go downhill, you can never get back, or only to some degree.
I appreciate the idea that anybody would think of me as a star. But I'm really not career oriented in the sense that I want to be a star. It's not in me. It's not what I do. In fact, I'm amazed that I've even gotten this far.
I consider myself lucky to be an only child because if I had other siblings, my mother would not have been able to take me to every audition and be so supportive of my career.
I was quite young when I went to a drama workshop. I was around 9 or 10. I showed interest in it. I never saw it as a career. At around 16, I knew what I wanted to do.
As I got further into my career, as a character of color, if I was going to have the types of opportunities I felt I deserved, and continue to have them, I was going to have to start creating those opportunities for myself.
If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.
