I originally got into this because of a five-year-old's begrudgery of his teacher. Mrs. Lawlor cast me as a tree, and I was disgusted. I was sure I had more to offer than that. It was like, 'OK, if you want me to be set dressing, fine, I'll take it on the chin but I'll show you - I'm going to be a big actor some day.'
In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family's second child, a boy. She died during the procedure.
As a five-year-old kid, I used to sit in front of the TV - I never missed 'Dukes of Hazzard,' not once. It was me and my dad's show.
I know I have sex appeal, but I've never felt like an actual sex symbol. Fans sometimes think I am. The majority of them are sweet about it, but occasionally somebody weird becomes totally fixated upon me.
I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.
I take each thing as it comes and appreciate everything that's in front of me now because people in this industry are so fixated on the next thing that they don't enjoy the moment. It passes you by, and all of a sudden, it's over.
The first house I bought was a little Spanish bungalow on Clinton Street in West Hollywood, right behind the Improv. I was renting it, and I asked the owners if I could buy it, and they were really nice and let me work out a deal. And I fixed it up and later sold it. That was when I realized that if you make some improvements, you can make money.
I'm a fixer, unfortunately. I'm like, 'Oh, I can fix you.' But it's not just guys I'm dating anymore. It's this entire legion of young girls who tell me they need me to maintain any sort of sanity or peace.
There was a lot of me trying to be a 'fixer.' I was that kind of guy. I'd meet someone who had 'so much potential' that needed 'help.' I think that was kind of my curse for a long time.
I was a dispatcher, flat-tire fixer, changed the oil, fixed the fan belts. There was nothing too good for me.
Please criticize me, but how can you accuse me of something like fixing a cricket game after all that the game has given me.
When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.
There are a lot of parents who've come to me and said about their daughters, 'Oh my God, she's 21, she's totally flailing. Your story gives me hope.' I put my mom through that.
I love doing photoshoots; it let's me really show off my personality, flair, and makeup within a photo.
Miami is nothing like me, and that's why I need to be here - it's the opposite. I'm practical, where this place is moody, I'm stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and I'm materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - there's a quicksilver quality about this place.
I'm not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that's not me.
My father was strict, but he recognised my ability and got a lot of flak from the church for supporting me.
Did peopleβs attitudes towards me change after I appeared on TV? Yeah, definitely. During my career Iβve had some flak - particularly doing television.
Even my mom is calling me Shaggy now, which is weird, because Shaggy is more like a character that I play. Shaggy is flamboyant; he's cocky. And I can't live that twenty-four hours a day - hell, no.
Fashion in the mid-'90s was too easy. Artistic culture was very earnest, so I was flamboyant and dangerous. I wanted to be seen as more than an outline, so I used fashion to say that for me.
