We were always drawing comics as kids. My brother Charles made me draw comics. I was very much under his domination. He was actually a much stronger artistic visionary than I was.
When I was a kid a growing up in Ontario, Canada, Lake Erie was so polluted, I never thought it would ever, EVER be turned around where they could start cleaning it out in my lifetime!
As a kid growing up in the little city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, I dreamed of one day playing in the NHL, but never did I expect it to be as much fun as it turned out to be.
I was concerned about doing the right thing when I was a kid. I suppose as a child, you're a massive egomaniac, and you think that everything you do is going to affect the world.
Open yer mind to the world, kids. No point havin' yer windows open if yer don't pull back the curtains to let in the light!" - Grandpa's favourite saying to Kirsten and Jeremy. Quoted in The Hybrid and the Emeralds of Elisar
Getting one bill passed is close to impossible. Ask any kid who has spent a summer in Washington, or better yet a semester, and can't understand how people tolerate its menu of constant frustration. Imagine mastering it.
I went to The Miller School of Albemarle, just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. As a kid, I really loved the movie 'Toy Soldiers' starring Sean Astin and Lou Gossett Jr., and when I found out they filmed that movie at the Miller School, I was ex...
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.
I was very awkward as a kid. I was a square trying to fit into a circle and it never worked for me. The harder I tried, the harder I fell. For some reason I was a real target and I got beat up and called names.
A friend of mine has a son who became deaf through meningitis. He called me one spring and asked me to keep a week out of my schedule because he wanted to start a school for deaf kids. I wanted to help.
I used to teach kids when I was younger. When I was about 14 or 15 I started teaching children drama and something that I used to say to them was, 'Don't be afraid.' People would be afraid of forgetting their lines or something.
Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language.
My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.
Before I was a year old I walked and talked and I was even potty trained. When I started going to school I think I got on everyone's nerves because I used to ask adult questions rather than settle for the stuff usually fed to kids.
When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of ...
I've been offered 'Celebrity Fit Club', where you have to take off your shirt and get on a scale. I got kids, man. I'm not going to humiliate myself. I'd rather drive a cab.
'Man In The Mirror' by Michael Jackson - I used to have my very first dance parties with my kids to this song when they were little, even carried them around to it. It just makes you want to be a better person and be inspired.
Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.
I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.
However, most of my part, I play a pediatrician, and most of my role had to do with being in another place, staying at the hospital and trying to save kids and stay until people could come. So, it was more based on reality.
When I was a child, kids used to make fun of me because I was blind. But I just became more curious, 'How can I climb this tree and get an apple for this girl?' That's what mattered to me.
