I think because there is the constant looming threat of nepotism and judgment, I really tried to separate what I was doing at MTV, my auditions, anything I was doing creatively, from my family.
I was born in St. Augustine, Florida. I lived there till I was about 13, and then my family moved to Connecticut. I finished school there, and then I went to college in Philadelphia and came to New York in '87. I wasn't finished with school - I left school to go on the road.
My whole family is spiritual. My grandmother, grand aunt, cousins, they're all preachers and pastors. Spirituality is a part of my family, from generations ago.
Radio was my life growing up. Then, I started in our family band with my uncle, my father, my aunt and my little brother. We would go to The Chicken Box and all the bars and play.
I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined, and my mother loved that. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me.
I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the problem.
I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.
My family is certainly very vocal. They're very Italian. A lot of our holidays end with people screaming at each other across the room. And everyone's very opinionated and intelligent. A lot of my aunts and uncles are wildly educated, and their opinions reflect that. We're all very liberal.
I talk a lot about the men in my family because my mother died when I was little, and my grandmother died when my aunts were little, so we didn't have those kinds of heads of household. But all the members of our household who were female were sort of living as equal and as wise as the male figures in our family.
I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven.
My family background really only consists of my mother. She was a widow. My father died quite young; he must have been thirty-one. Then there was my twin brother and my sister. We had two aunts as well, my father's sisters. But the immediate family consisted of my mother, my brother, my sister, and me.
My God, it's laundry and family when I come back home. I've got to see my brother and kids, and my sister-in-law, my aunts, my uncles, cousins; everybody is here.
I come from a family with a really strong work ethic - not just my parents, but my aunts, uncles and cousins. It rubbed off on me. I have a cousin in The Bronx who says I'm like the longshoreman of actors. I am a worker.
I grew up in a house that was always happy, and my family was always music, music. I started playing percussion very young, because I had some uncles who were musicians and all my aunts were singers.
The fact is that Sarah Palin positively emanates strength. She gives off the aura of being a strong woman who doesn't back down, and she does it sporting heels and wearing her family like a badge of honour. I am sure there are a million other women out there who are doing the same thing.
My mother arrived in Brussels in 1938 from a small town near Krakow. But strangely enough, in 1942 or 1943, she was taken back to Auschwitz, which was just 30 miles from where she grew up. Her parents died there and a lot of her family.
My own interest in Kafka's letter came about when I was writing an article on Peter Ginz, the boy novelist held in Terezin, not far from Prague, and exterminated in Auschwitz by the Nazis. The Ginz family were from more or less the same milieu as the Kafkas.
In the summer of 1954, after several years in Austin, Minnesota, our family moved across the state to the small, rural town of Worthington, where my dad became regional manager for a life insurance company. To me, at age 7, Worthington seemed a perfectly splendid spot on the earth.
There is a real sense of family when you're around Australians, even if you don't know them.
I grew up so poor in Austria that we never took a vacation with my family.
