I have friends in Utah who care about me as a person, not for what I am. They'll call to see how my heart is, how my blood pressure is. That's important to me.
I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community, and most of my friends had blonde hair and blue eyes. So I was always straightening my hair, wearing colored contacts, and I never tanned, if I could help it.
All my friends from my past would know me as Scott Diggs. Taye Diggs comes from Scott-taye. When I went to college I liked it because it was so different and I have an infatuation with nicknames.
My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
My biggest hobby is airsoft, which is similar to paintball. Essentially, it's military simulation, but the guns shoot plastic BBs. My friends and I go out in the woods or the desert and play all day long!
Steven, my friend who came out to me my senior year, was a huge Madonna fan. So I may know all the words to 'Bedtime Stories,' 'Erotica,' and a few more of her albums - and we may have watched 'Truth or Dare' a thousand times.
When you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.
Growing up it was the exception because I was maybe the only one in my school or my circle of friends that had that experience. But now that I know more people in the industry, I am realizing this happens to almost everybody.
Just look at my face. Its an extraordinary experience. All of my friends who are grandparents have been saying, just wait, a bit cynically, but its just extraordinary. You feel like a child again yourself. Just walking on air.
I really don't care what people think of me. I've got my family. I've got my friends. Yes, I have been trained to be a little more aggressive if I need to be, but I don't go around thumping people.
I've been my most happy and my most unhappy in relationships. I have family and friends and people I care very much about. I've got a really, really, really good life.
I went to boarding school in the country, so there's no real differentiation between family and friends. I went there from when I was 8 until I was 17 - it was insane. If you earn my friendship, you are my family, and I'll do anything for you.
I'm lucky to have a great support system in my friends and some of my family. If you have those people that you trust, go ahead and fall back into them and let them be your hammock and cocoon and let them embrace you.
I don't think anybody should ever take their life for being bullied. But if it wasn't for my family... and my circle of friends, I could definitely see why someone would see it doesn't get any better than this, but it does. Life is so beautiful.
I consider myself really lucky to be able to visit so many parts of the world, but after all of that, I love to come home. I appreciate my own space and the world I create for myself, my family and friends.
When I was going away to school, I had a friend who took a liking to my family just a little too much. We couldn't get her out of the house. It took me saying to my parents, 'I don't want her here. I'm feeling replaced.'
No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.
A lot of my friends growing up were hunters, but I spent all my time on the ice hurting actual humans playing hockey. I never had the chance to run through the woods and shoot at a moose or deer. I was shooting pucks at goaltender's heads.
So when I got the chance to do my first talk show, 50 years ago last month, I never had any writers. There was no budget - it was just me and the camera and my friend who was the director. I talked about what I'd done that week.
These days it's cool to be ethnic and to be different, but when I was a kid, it was not cool - at all. My friends would come over and my mom would make crepes with eggs, stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and spinach. And they'd be like, 'What ...
I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.
