Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows... and having a common language with them is great because you have shortha...
I come from a family of Mississippi sharecroppers just a few generations away from slavery, and I experienced a lot of racism growing up - you can't avoid that if you're a person of color in this country.
I didn't grow up in a traditional family, and I never had a family dinner around the table, so whenever I actually had a dinner 'plan,' it meant a lot to me; it made me feel excited and safe.
I'm just lucky to have great parents. My sister's an actress. My brother's a musician. I found it hard growing up in such a... creatively driven family. I wanted to have this thing to create, myself.
My parents were very poor, but we never felt any sense of need or want. It was a very close, loving, tightly-knit family growing up, and I never felt any sense of deprivation or anything like that.
My family never told me like you have to be one thing. What do you want to be when you grow up? They think it's the most ridiculous question. You can be many, many things.
I actually didn't grow up in a household that loved Chinese food particularly, and it's not really my go-to food or anything... We were more a pizza family, being from the Chicago area and all.
When I was a kid growing up in the States in the late '70s and early '80s, as soon as 'Dallas' came on on a Friday night on CBS at 9 P.M., we stopped everything from that moment on as a family.
Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.
I've always loved writing, and my heritage has been interesting, growing up in a bi-cultural family. My mother being Vietnamese and my father being French, it's like an East-West meeting in my house.
Radio was my life growing up. Then, I started in our family band with my uncle, my father, my aunt and my little brother. We would go to The Chicken Box and all the bars and play.
I'll always be the baby in the family. I'm the youngest sister, but growing up with so many boys, it makes you tough. You get teased. There's no tiptoeing around each other. You say it the way it is; you're honest.
My mom always talks about how hard it was to grow up in a political family. It's always split up, and just - I want to have fun in life. No, politics isn't on the list.
I think there is something about... unless you come from a really evolved family that allowed you to talk about your feelings and felt like a safe environment, then you aren't really prepared to do that when you grow up.
If you've never had a mother or a father, you grow up seeking something you're never going to find, ever. You seek it in love and in people and in beauty.
The problem with growing up in a cafe was the cafe never closed, my parents worked every day of the year from morning to night. So it was a big menagerie of kids, business and cooking!
After working for 14 years on Wall Street and growing up in a family with strong roots in small business, I know how important the entrepreneurial spirit is to attaining the American dream.
I remember specifically my mother telling me growing up don't put my business in the street. I was like seven, and I am like, 'What does that mean.'
It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.
You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.'
Losing a parent is a hard thing... I often sit here and think it would be great if mum and dad were alive and had a chance to see their grandkids grow up.
