Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of time that they just thought I was.
During the time I was on The Hardy Boys, I was also watching other people's careers. I thought the next step was to be a movie star. I kept saying no to projects, and offers stopped coming in. I was no longer hot.
At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division of the country.
I don't think the money people in Hollywood have ever thought I was normal, but I am dedicated to my work and that's what counts.
A television chat show is light entertainment, so it is trivial by its very nature. It is hardly the place to get people to reveal their innermost thoughts. Then it becomes sensationalism, and you lower yourself to the level of the popular newspapers...
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.
Creatively, I thought we were still viable and could do more records. But our working relationship just wasn't happening at all, and our chemistry as people broke down because of that.
Star Trek wouldn't die. There were a whole lot of young people who were touched by the thought process of science fiction. If you watched a cop show, there wasn't anything that was going to stimulate your mind.
My parents wanted me to be a doctor. So I took up science, but then realised that my heart was not in it at all. The thought of treating ailing people was very depressing.
I've always known that sporting people frequently suffer from joint problems because of the repeated strain they put on their bodies to get to the top. But somehow I never thought it would happen to me.
It wasn't until I found my tribe of artists - people who were outspoken and not afraid to say what they thought, whether in a song or a dance or a piece of classical music - that I found a refuge.
I wondered how people would take me being a country music singer. I thought about deviating from that and singing other things. But... it doesn't really make sense for me to try to be something that I'm not.
I feel like I've been fighting in music and creating new ways and new opportunities to make things work even when people thought it wouldn't.
I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
I became the toast of London. A lot of people I met came from these really decadent families where the married men were gay and no one thought anything about it.
The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?
My mom makes something called green pie, which I thought was a delicacy that many people only had at Thanksgiving, but it turns out it was just Jell-O with whipped cream on it. And it's delicious.
I can't impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.
No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it.
The Romans thought of themselves as the chosen people, yet they built the greatest army on Earth by recruiting warriors from any background.
People may like a person’s thought for its touching words, but they like him truly for his own deeds touching their heart.
