I was born and brought up in Liverpool with my clever little sister Jemma, who is 14 and wants to be a vet. My mum Jane is an administrator and my dad Peter is a taxi driver.
My dad had a flock of sheep, which he used to milk, and then my mum used to make cheese and yogurt out of the sheep's milk and sell it. It was kind of an unusual upbringing, really.
My dad has sometimes felt that I grew up a little lacking in sufficient eccentricity - in the sense that I'm willing to live as an adult in a house with walls that are parallel to each other, that sort of thing.
I had to learn how to chop wood actually - I don't think my dad would have let me go chop wood in the backyard growing up.
Every dad who loves his daughter is not going to want her to go with the penniless slacker loser poet bum, when she could go out with someone who's successful.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn't put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
My dad used to put me in front of the TV screen and made me watch old Jimmy Durante and Dean Martin movies. I just always loved entertainment.
My grandmother would sing in the choir, while my dad - while he was in college - sang and recorded with a quartet. So yeah, it was definitely my dad's Southern side that impacted on me musically.
I was 13 - 14 when I first tasted stardom. In the summer holidays, my dad made me act in these films that went on to become superhits. I became a child star.
Having a dad in the service was helpful. I was forever meeting new kids, going to new schools, moving to new neighborhoods. I was encouraged when I attended the American School in Germany.
Even when I was doing well in acting, my dad would say, 'You can still go back to dental school.' But since I've been on '90210,' I haven't heard that.
That's what my Dad always told me, on the ballot, they should always have a third choice, like none of the above, then if enough people picked that, they'd have to get new candidates.
My dad actually taught me how to play piano. I was classically trained, but I've started to branch off a little bit into blues and jazz. That's my new thing.
My dad used to sell a type of commodity contract. It was so complicated, he was certain his sales people didn't understand what they were selling.
I worked with my dad for 15 years. I apprenticed under him and decided I wanted to become an architect. So I went to college for it and then the acting bug got me.
My dad died when he was 60. I was only 17 and I think, psychologically, that had a huge impact on me, probably more than I realised.
In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That's not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It's a different point in both our lives.
My dad worked as an executive at Lockheed Aircraft and worked on the U-2 and things like that. My mother was a homemaker, and she was vice-president of the Democratic Council of California back in the '50s.
When my book 'Rich Dad's Prophecy' was released in 2002, most financial newspapers and magazines trashed it because I discussed a looming stock market crash.
I read a lot of research notes about the countries I visit, and my mum and dad bought me a Kindle, but I'm still getting to grips with it. I prefer paper books.
My dad took on every job he could get. He worked like mad. But then, at some point, he had saved up enough to open his first pub.
