That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.
It sounds like a cliche, but it... you do sing about what you know about. And I grew up in a small town, and I grew up in a place where your whole world revolved around friends, family, school, and church, and sports.
Alcoholism is a genetically predisposed disease and it does run in my family. I also think I felt like a misfit. I was in the South, everybody was blonde. I just didn't feel like I fitted in. It was sort of my way of fitting.
I have been able to have a family and to dedicate quality time to my two sets of twins and my husband, as well as to serve on the boards of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and Montefiore Medical Center.
So if you serve a whole chicken to your family like grandma did, you may be serving them 10 times as much fat than the days of yesteryear. That's a whole lotta fat, and big trouble for the waistline.
My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it.
I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?
I have no regrets. I feel very grateful for the life that I had - you know, family I live with; and I've been doing work that I love, ever since I came to Nashville.
Seeing family is what brings me peace. If I'm not traveling home on my day off, I love going to Central Park to be around trees and throw a Frisbee with my boyfriend.
In terms of the Japanese royal family, they were considered the direct descendants of a god. They are regarded as all-powerful and possessors of unimaginable wealth, and yet they are, more often than not, literally prisoners of tradition.
I love mythology, grew up loving it. I'm a middle kid, big family, that's the thing you did in the farm country. I lived in Iowa, I loved mythology. I don't know, we're like that.
Until I was five, my immediate family lived near my grandfather's farm where my mother had grown up and, with the exception of a few modern conveniences, had not changed a lot over the years.
Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who's always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.
As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.
The practical reality of managing cars in the family - I do 36-month leases. I think they're horrible investments. And you want to give them back after their warranty is over.
Like every mom, you try to juggle, but I also want people to know that you don't have to be a superhero. I'm not a superhero; I have a team of people who help me. I have a great family support system.
I just really like people, and being a freelancer can be lonely during the day, when you're at home trying to write anything you can. 'Flight Of The Conchords' was so wonderful because I had a family for two years.
I always say that I was dancing and acting in the belly. I feel like it's something I was born with and inspired by my family since I grew up backstage, watching them perform. I guess it was just a natural path for me.
For a while, I thought the great disappointment of my life was that I don't have a family of my own. Then it dawned on me: That's not what I think; that's what married people think.
So the news that divorced fathers are to be denied a legal right to a relationship with their children, in the long overdue review of family law published this week, fills me with horror and despair.
An adversarial family law system raises the stakes unnecessarily high, exacerbates the antagonism of the couples concerned, and is directly responsible for making it impossible for couples who would otherwise have reconciled to do so.
