My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affi...
Race is used, by all of us, in the most manipulative ways, is often force-fit and reduced to something it isn't, to something that gives us a sense of comfort, a false one. Many of us thought - needed to feel - the whole business was 'settled.' But i...
I remember being in the Ontario Legislature and the Liberals yelling over at me about the fact that the dollar was rising, and that was bad for business, and didn't I realize that. And I thought, 'What are you talking about?' The value of the currenc...
But I grew up in a place where no one knew anyone in the entertainment business, I never knew it was an actual career. The closest I ever got to movies was going to watch them, and I thought that's the way it would be, so I never considered working i...
I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.
I remember once being told by a casting person, years ago, that I shouldn't pursue a career in the business because of the color of my skin. The fact that I remember it today means it stuck with me. I thought that was really stupid advice and advice ...
We believed it was better to pay as you go than it was to pay your bills by borrowing and laying up debts for another day. To pay as you go, that policy is a safer business policy and a saner business policy, and we thought it was a saner national po...
Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, 'Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I audi...
At the Harvard Business School, I really felt I had gained the ability to resolve difficult issues. But I also felt that I wasn't in the mainstream with my fellow students. During job-hunting season, for example, everybody shaved their beards for int...
After I met my partner, Mr. Protherow, we decided to start a banking project, and at the same time we started to think already about a business on a bigger scale. At the very beginning we thought more about gaining money, to have a normal life with o...
Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties...
When I began work on my first book, 'The River of Doubt,' which tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt's 1914 descent of an unmapped river in the Amazon rainforest, I thought of it as a tale of adventure, exploration and extraordinary courage.
There have been times when I felt suicidal and I would stop my head from going in that direction of negativity because I thought there'd be something I'd miss that was funny in the future. If there's a chance I'm going to laugh tomorrow then want to ...
The fact 'Twin Peaks' had a life at all took most of us in the cast by surprise. We thought it would be too unusual for network television. The original intention was that it would be a two-hour movie. If the network didn't want to pick it up as a se...
For me, take Tiger Woods. I always thought he was great, but I never truly understood how good he was until I had the chance to go to Tiger Woods Golf Camp. He taught me how to swing and was hitting the ball, and this dude was unreal.
I did find some time to go to a record store and check out 'Headstrong' actually in the racks. It was pretty cool; I never thought I'd see my own CD sitting there with everyone else's. I made my Mom take lots of pics!
I had a grungy period and looked like a tramp for a very long time - my mum really hated it! I destroyed her entire '70s wardrobe by putting studs into everything - I thought I was really cool. But it's good to experiment - I even had dreadlocks at o...
I went to engineering school, which I thought was what I wanted to do, for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool, but I was like, 'There is no way this is going to be my life.'
I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was...
The pop world is cool, but I never really thought of myself as part of it or wanting to be a part of it because I'm on a label that's not really like that. They're not trying to dress me up, they're not trying to do things like that. I feel like I'm ...
I've thought it would be cool to have a baby young. You know, be my road dog - like my dogs, they travel the world - but there's always something you have to give up for success. Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?