I get more fulfilment from being a father than I do from being an actor.
We grew up in a middle-class family in Chicago. Even when we went on vacation as a family, it wasn't a really fun time, because my father didn't want to spend any money when we got there.
I fell in love with funk music through my father - Funkadelic - as well as soul and classical early on.
One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.
My father was the funniest man I ever met. He made Redd Foxx look like an undertaker.
My father was always a straight-up funny guy. He was silly. He was my inspiration.
My mother and my father are both very funny people, and they're both artistic in their own right. Oftentimes, we get very dramatic about things, but we also laugh really hard.
My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
My father could swear in Gaelic and English, by the way, ladies and gentlemen.
The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.
For all my proclivities for thuggery, I am a typical middle-class dad. I'm a gangsta rap suburban father!
He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of 'Restaurant Man' - the original gangsta 'Restaurant Man,' my father - was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.
At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.
My mother was a housewife. My father was a garment worker.
Every backstory involves my father. I remember hearing Gary Oldman talking about backstories and saying, 'I got to stop using my father...' And I feel the same way. I don't know. What I come up with always involves some element of this son trying to prove himself to his father.
A distant cousin sent me some genealogy report on my father's side, and it's sort of what I suspected. Coal miners for generations... four or maybe five generations.
My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.
My father has a general rule. He says if I haven't done it in real life I shouldn't do it on-screen.
His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures.
When my father is happy with my music, I know I have done something good, and there is no question of generation gap.
