When I was born in 1970 with a rare genetic disorder called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED) medical science wasn't what it is today and my mum and dad were treated terribly by the medical profession.

The Rat Pack was the piece that really kicked me out of that little funk that I was in and then Ted called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the dad in Blow.

My dad came out of the Roosevelt era and the Depression. One person and one party made a difference in his life. That's what everybody forgot when they called my father and other people political bosses.

It's not like he called me up and asked me. They've never wanted to throw us into that world and I think our decision probably shocked them. But I love my dad and I think I'd regret it if I didn't do this.

Dad sometimes patted me on the knee and called me his Little Schmuck.

But you know my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy his answer was that's not what he was doing and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds and she did a few movies and she was really a great singer and when she married my dad and started to have a family she sang at parties.

My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs and just being a black person I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.

I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

At one point my dad called me and said 'You have always been a great salesman. I think it's time you come home and sell swimming pools.'

When I was in nursery school the teachers asked me y'know 'What does your dad do for a living?' So I said 'He helps women get pregnant!' They called my mom and they were like 'What exactly does your husband do?'

In our film profession you may have Gable's looks Tracy's art Marlene's legs or Liz's violet eyes but they don't mean a thing without that swinging thing called courage.

Sep-11 2001 revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.

Washington's answer to a self-inflicted financial crisis reminded Americans why they so deeply distrust the political class. The 'fiscal cliff' process was secretive and sloppy and the nation's so-called leadership lacked the political courage to address our root problems: joblessness and debt.

I used to skip out of high school and go flying. It was just one of those things I thought it was kind of a cool thing to do. I never thought about doing that as a profession but I started checking things out and I found out there was a flight school down in Daytona Beach called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

The Dead was cool It's a great horror story. I went to the casting director of this movie and talked to him then they called my agent and had me come in and read for it and they wanted to use me.

That wasn't the way that things was supposed to be. And all because the so-called culture that I thought was right that I thought it was cool and I thought it was fun and it was exciting at the time. It all led to me laying in a prison bunk by myself with no one to talk to but myself.

For 'The Haunting Hour ' I thought it would be a lot of fun. It was great to play this cool kid role. My episode is called 'The Intruders' and my character is this mean angry teenager because her younger brother was just born and he gets all of the attention. She's always playing tricks on her family and there are some cool twists.

For electronica music David Linton has been doing this series called Unity Gain which is pretty cool.

Sometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life.

I have a crazy amount of different jobs so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips they would do something called swapping where they would fill the memory with one task do it and get it out.

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.

When you have that window of opportunity called a crisis move as quickly as you can get as much done as you can. There's a momentum for change that's very compelling.