In our racist, sexist society, Christmas is the eight hours when we stop killing each other and gratuitous overeating is encouraged so that the starving and other people in the world can die!
It's hard and sometimes it's scary. It still amazes my mother. I went home for Christmas one year and there were fans all over the front lawn, hoping to see me.
I watched a lot of movies when I was younger and I remember, when I was seven years old, I asked my parents if I could have an agent for Christmas.
I was once part of a Christmas cabaret. I sang 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.' I tap-danced. I had a ten-gallon hat. It was quite absurd.
So when I was 13, I basically left home and never returned and lived at home again. I would come home for a week at Christmas and two weeks in the summer only.
The truth is that our way of celebrating the Christmas season does spring from myriad cultures and sources, from St. Nicholas to Coca-Cola advertising campaigns.
We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
For Christmas I do gift bags for my friends and the cast, and I put 'treat yo self' key chains in there. And people send me pictures of 'treat yo self' all the time.
I've been playing on Christmas for the last 10, 11, 12 years. So just got to get up early with the babies, and give them their toys and try to get a nap in and just come to play.
My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.
Christmas always rustled. It rustled every time, mysteriously, with silver and gold paper, tissue paper and a rich abundance of shiny paper, decorating and hiding everything and giving a feeling of reckless extravagance.
It was, you know, probably 80 degrees out in L.A., and my dad took me outside and there was snow. At the time, I thought, 'Every kid doesn't have snow in their backyard on Christmas?'
Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.
Dad's cancer experience included periods of relatively good health as well as bouts of hospitalisation as he coursed his way through a variety of different chemotherapy treatments.
My dad would always tell me, 'When you meet a man, look him in his eye and shake his hand,' and that's just something I've been doing for a long time.
When I was little, I grew up in a place called Hertfordshire, which is just near London, but out in the country, and I visited Pakistan in the summers to go and see my family on my dad's side.
My mother had very humble beginnings - to put it mildly. Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning - 'no foolishness,' as he would call it.
Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.
I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London,' I'll go and do it.
Going to the theater is such a joyous experience. My dad would take my sister and me to plays when we were very young, like six or seven years old.
My dad said that if it's part of the character, I'm allowed to say bad words, but if it's not part of the character, and I say it at home when I'm not acting, that I won't be acting anymore.
