I’m not really interested in the black and white, the 'goodies and baddies.' I find the complexity of the gray areas more compelling, more intriguing. As I have said before, there are angels and demons in all of us, and I am interested in the relat...
My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and ...
Understanding and unconditionally loving yourself is the key to achieving everything you desire. Understanding is the part that I believe so many slide by, therefore finding self love a challenge. When we understand what our inner thought process is ...
I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago. I attended Glenbard South High School and University of Illinois. I didn't study acting until I moved to Los Angeles after college, but the fact that I was raised in the Chicago area s...
We all have blind spots – those areas for improvement and growth. As painful as it can be to admit we’re doing things we never wanted to do and saying things we never wanted to say, it is this acknowledgement that enables us to take the first ste...
In a lot of the really impoverished areas of Johannesburg you see these packets of cheesy puffs which are like 6 feet long and the width of a basketball, and they're transparent and they have like 10,000 cheesy puffs in them, and you can buy that for...
That's the great thing about being an actor: Stuff shows up that you never thought was going to go down. You get to play or experience an area of the world that - you know, I live a pretty simple life, I'm not much of an adventurer. I like my couch a...
I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral musi...
Good food and a warm kitchen are what makes a house a home. I always tried to make my home like my mother's, because Mom was magnificent at stretching a buck when it came to decorating and food. Like a true Italian, she valued beautification in every...
Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama's camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We've sat and had dinner, and we've spoken on the phone. He's a very sharp g...
When I was training for the Chicago Marathon, I would eat a cup of cereal after an 18-mile long run, and then I'd have to get out the door with nothing but a granola bar in my hand. I can't change my busy schedule with my kids, but I can work harder ...
That's how we grew up - kinda like Pops would put his drums, his percussion and instruments into the car and we would just go to a facility in the Bay Area and he would say to us, 'You think we have it bad? There are people worse off than we are. Let...
I went to hockey camp at Michigan because my dad has some relatives in the Ann Arbor area. We went to visit them as kids, and you start to learn the language from being around people. At the same time, when I got to college, I thought my English was ...
You have to really respect what your kids are doing with their kids and how they're raising them. You can't push your way into areas where you shouldn't be saying anything. You have to always remember they're not your own kids. Play with them, love t...
I exercise about 40 minutes a day, and I'll run one day and do circuit training the next day. I live in an area where there are brilliant hills and mountains, so I get a good hill run with my dog. At home, I'll do the circuit training with old weight...
I hope that there's a difference between being childish and childlike and that I'm the latter, if you take my meaning. I often sort of wonder. I don't think I'm a terribly good grown-up; I don't take responsibility easily or well in many areas of lif...
For the first ten years after I got out of graduate school, I studied success. I read every book I could get my hands on and took every training I could find, and that allowed me to become an expert in this area. I learned how to create high self-est...
There are people that have that confidence, who march into VIP areas. I assume I won't get in. I don't say, 'Do you know who I am?', but sometimes I'm with someone who says it for you. Then, I pretend to be all, 'Oh, please don't shame me!'.
We're here so that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for transnational extremists the way it was when al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks in the Kandahar area, conducted the initial training for the attackers in training camps in Afgha...
This is actually true of the overall fight against al-Qaeda and trans-national extremists, that as you put pressure on them in one location, they'll seek safe haven sanctuaries in other areas. So you do have to continue to pursue them. But they have ...
I have a group of cafes and coffee shops that I go to regularly. They usually have an area where I can plug in my computer and have a corner seat where I can do a couple hours of writing or whatever, even the noise of the surrounding people walking b...
