Nobody knows better than I do what the pressures of party leadership can do to a young family. It tore mine apart.
I've spent a lot of my career playing heroes, like Jared in 'The Pretender,' but playing part of a dysfunctional family is more interesting.
What prevailed was that it was a family story, so it didn't matter what the color. It was also the perfect subject matter for a miniseries: A best-selling book, a generational story, a social problem - they all made 'Roots' what a miniseries should be.
I have family members who live in Africa. Because of the family that lives there, I know what is happening in these countries, and it seems so silly to me that diseases like malaria are so prevalent when they are entirely preventable. Yet children are still dying every 35 seconds.
I can never bring myself to watch Mahesh's films. It's way too stressful for me. All his family members are eager to attend and enjoy the previews of his films like normal people. But I sit at home chewing my nails, praying, wondering if this one will be as big as the previous one, and so on.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
This Sonia Gandhi thing should be seen in perspective - the people of India have an emotional attachment to the family. And why not? Three of the five Congress prime ministers belong to that family. The people empathise with the family name.
For a time during the 1980s the Royal Family were not just the most influential family in Britain but probably in Europe and Prince Charles specifically was very much like a defacto Cabinet member and what he said actually had impact on public policy.
I think Princess Diana enjoyed it here in Pakistan immensely. She had a good time. But she never came to my family home. She came to my home in Lahore instead.
It's very important to prioritize. I know, for me, my family comes first. That makes every decision very easy.
Prioritize your family.
There's love for your parents, your family, your spouse, your partner, your friends, but the nature of the connection you have with your child, there's nothing like it. It has its own character and it's so serious and so powerful, and so it's a prism through which I see everything.
The police cannot protect the citizen at this stage of our development, and they cannot even protect themselves in many cases. It is up to the private citizen to protect himself and his family, and this is not only acceptable, but mandatory.
Because of their low earnings and family obligations, Latinas would not be putting much money into private investment accounts. An average Latina could wind up losing thousands of dollars under this proposal.
Sure, if you're a well to do family, you always have the option of sending your children to private schools where teachers spend less time disciplining kids and more time teaching them. However, this option is beyond the reach of most households. And this is what makes school vouchers such a promising solution for lower and middle income families.
My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
It was through the private world of family that the public world of politics came alive for me: living in intimate proximity with people for whom larger questions of ideology and belief, as well as issues relating to politics and governance, were vivid daily realities.
We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn't handle that business then there were no privileges.
I have always felt intuitively that somehow such wealth cannot be the privy of any one person or any one family.
Nothing's really a prized possession except my family, you know?
