I was really bright as a kid and tested well and it was clear that I was going to get scholarships to any schools I wanted. My dad always said I could be an engineer at that time it was the elite of society: steady job working in science which was then the answer to every problem we had. It was kind of a mandate. Kind of a dream he had for me.

When I realized I was having trouble reading I was too embarrassed to ask for help. Some teachers believed in me but I just wasn't focused on school - I was into the music and trying to please my dad.

My dad was a master butcher and I trained to be a butcher when I left school. I didn't enjoy it at the time but I love cooking now so perhaps I would have been a chef.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something and he was very creative.

My dad's a bodybuilder. My whole life I've been taught to train the hard way. I believe in earning strength not buying it. My grandfather raised me old school: In baseball you work for whatever you get.

I finished high school moved to Nashville for college and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps.

You know when everyone's watching your mom and dad your friends in high school who thought they were better than you. You get your chance to get in the spotlight and shine.

The last thing I want my child to see is Dad running around in the middle of the pack. That would really upset me. And that would upset him. I would be embarrassed to take him to school with kids saying 'Hey how'd your dad do this weekend?' 'Well he finished fifth or sixth'.

I'm afraid that this is me getting on my high horse now but we have yob television yob newspapers and funny enough whereas it was my mum and dad school police church who used to set the standards now it's tabloids and yob television who set the standards by which people live.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house and I just started for lack of a better term running free.

Keep in my mind my dad didn't become a huge huge mega actor until I was halfway through high school - so right around the time he's going through his big renaissance is right when I'm starting to do my high school revolting.

'Keep your head down at school.' Those are sage words from my dad. They kept me in check for years.

And then before going back for my sophomore year I decided to change my major to arts and sciences and my dad cut a deal with me: He said if I'd quit school he'd pay my rent for the next three years as if I were in school.

My dad remembers being in school with my uncle and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn't be trusted.

My parents moved to American Samoa when I was three or four years old. My dad was principal of a high school there. It was idyllic for a kid. I had a whole island for a backyard. I lived there until I was eight years old and we moved to Santa Barbara.

My mum was raised Jewish my dad is very scientifically minded and my school was vaguely Christian. We sang hymns in school. I liked the hymns bit but apart from that I can take it or leave it. So I had lots of different influences when I was younger.

My dad was the manager at the 45 000-acre ranch but he owned his own 1 200-acre ranch and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.

I wanted to perform well for my mom and dad because in high school I didn't have a job. My brothers they worked at Pizza Hut or places like that but sports that was my way of giving back.

You always give credit where credit is due - to high school coaches college coaches - but my dad the foundation that he built with me is where all of this came from. The speed the determination the mindset just the natural belief that you can do anything you put your mind to it all comes from my dad.

My senior year of high school when I was getting recruited for college my dad goes to me 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like 'Uh are you talking to me?'

In my case I was born to parents who were very young and I don't think they were entirely ready to have a child. My dad was going to college and working two or three jobs at the same time and my mum was working and going to school.

I was always the new kid in school I'm the kid from a broken family I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.

Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.