Dinner 'conversation' at the Cohens' meant my sister, mom, and I relaying in brutal detail the day's events in a state of amplified hysteria, while my father listened to his own smooth jazz station in his head.
My mother and father definitely encouraged me. People used to tell my mom that I should be in commercials, and then everything kicked off from there, and my first gig was some print work.
That's actually how my parents met. They were pen pals. My mom was in the Philippines and my father was in the States, and they wrote to each other. He went out to meet her, and they wed not too long after.
My argument is simple, which is, that for several thousand years in Western civilization, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman. Research is overwhelming that children need mothers and fathers.
My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.
As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father 'giving' the bride away, women taking their husband's last name, the white dress, the vows promising to 'obey...
My father was on the faculty in the Chemistry Department of Harvard University; my mother had one year of graduate work in physics before her marriage.
My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the 'Grapes of Wrath,' his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.
Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.
Antonio Salieri: [to Father Vogel] That was Mozart. That! That giggling dirty-minded creature I had just seen, crawling on the floor!
Mum: I am fucking furious. I am so uninterested in a life without your father.
Robert's Father: At last, you know what it means to hate. Now you're ready to be a king. Robert the Bruce: My hate will die with you.
Robert's Father: I'm the one who's rotting, but I think your face looks graver than mine.
My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.
I always saw myself as really ugly. My father even told me I was ugly because I would shave my head and look like a boy.
Anyone who was tempted to draw comparisons between my father's 'Dave Robicheaux' series and my first book quickly gave up.
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Gorillas remind me of my father. He was a very big, physically strong man but also very sensitive.
My parents had four children quickly, divorced quickly - when I was two - and my mother remarried quickly. We were suddenly in a different environment with a different father.
I don't think I'll be playing again. I'm very content and happy, doing the types of things I haven't gotten to do, be a father.
You come on as a guest. You don't get the girl anymore. But that is our lives. You start off as the boyfriend, then you are the lover, then you are the husband, then you are the father, and then you are the grandfather.
