My mother was a very talented artist. When she was in jail, we'd write letters back and forth; that was pretty much the only form of communication we had.
We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.
My mother raised me in the church. I was not allowed to stay home on Sunday; there was no option. I sang in the choir all the way up until I went to college.
I hope I'm very similar to my mum because she is a fantastic mother. She was driven as well as being incredibly protective and caring, and I think that is important.
Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.
I was always an observer, even as a child. I could be satisfied to sit in a car for 3 hours and just look at the street go by while my mother went shopping.
Christmas was the one time of year when my brothers surfaced at home, when my parents and grandparents congregated to eat my mother's roast turkey.
My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.
My mother is very emotional as well, but my dad is more of the guts of the family. He was the main preacher, so he kind of had this little Pentecostal flair, but they are born-again.
My mother married three times. My dad is... I don't really have one. I mean, he does exist, but I have zero relationship with him.
I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant.
My dad worked as an executive at Lockheed Aircraft and worked on the U-2 and things like that. My mother was a homemaker, and she was vice-president of the Democratic Council of California back in the '50s.
My mother always taught me, even my dad, just never let other people's opinions of you shape your opinion of yourself. And I never have and I never will.
I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.
When my mother had four girls, and she could tell her marriage was falling apart, she went back to college and got her degree in music and education.
When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing.
My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.
When I was four years old, my mother put me into a school for early music education where you get perfect pitch and harmony and composition.