Marry me and I'll never look at another horse!
My father is a huge horse racing fan, so I was introduced to the sport long before 'Seabiscuit.' But the role made me an even bigger fan. Horse racing is one of my favorite sports.
I have never been to Ladies' Day at the Grand National. I've never been to any day there, truth be told, and unless they introduce a Scruffy People Who Believe Horse Racing to Be Deeply Cruel Day and pay me to attend I can't see that changing.
My dad is a big Outlaw country guy - Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Waylon, Willie. He loves Elvis and turned me onto Elvis. He was always playing me stuff. He and I would sing and entertain the family. We'd have a little skit on Thanksgiving or whatever.
I'm born originally in Toronto, and I have what I call my 'Fame' story. I took a Greyhound bus and went to Alvin Ailey and received Dunham, Horton, Graham technique there, but I could never take my eyes off of Balanchine doing 'Nutcracker'; to me he's the best who ever did it.
I'm like a fire hose when the alarm goes off in a battle against a woman. Don't ever count me out.
I really liked to perform. My mother always tells this story: I was five. They had a party, and they'd put me to bed. I heard everyone on the rooftop, and I went upstairs. No one paid any attention to me, so I took a hose and sprayed everyone. Very elegant, right? 'It's me! Look at me!' I loved the attention.
I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn't see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet - and that's how Spanx born.
I'm not a type-B personality who knows I have a cancer growing inside of me and can live with the knowledge. I go into a kung-fu attack position when I go through the door of a hospital.
My mother told me, 'Son, nobody else but God knows.' And that's what I'm about - reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That's what I do.
Poems, for me, begin as a social engagement. I want to establish a kind of sociability or even hospitality at the beginning of a poem. The title and the first few lines are a kind of welcome mat where I am inviting the reader inside.
The best timed joke or the best timed phrase comes at spontaneous moments and just relies on me as the host to be very quick, and that's what I do.
I spent a lot of my twenties wanting a maid, really. I thought I wanted a relationship, but I just wanted somebody to fix and nurse me, and I'd take her hostage for six months. When you're 23, 24, you want to be in a relationship because they look brilliant - you've heard all the songs about it and seen all the movies and it looks great.
I used to practice at the hockey ground on synthetic surface while I was in the sports hostel, so Test cricket is certainly going to be a challenge for me.
My mother always tells me that when I was a little kid, my first ambition was to be a truck driver, and after that, I went through everything from wanting to be a Prime Minister to an air hostess, but never an actor. So I became one, and it was a great journey. I learnt a lot, worked very hard.
To me, the stage is like my living room, or my home, and when you come over to my house, I have to be a hostess and invite you in so that we can have a great time.
I was a hostess in a restaurant in New York when I was 21, and I was too good of an employee. I was putting most of my energy into that instead of acting. But my father told my sister and me to look at whatever needed to be done and do that job well, no matter what it was.
Not only do people stop me on the street to say, 'We're walking, we're walking', but I have actually been in restaurants where the hostess was saying it to customers.
I went through a brief phase when I thought of other career options: being an air hostess and even a psychologist. But eventually, my destiny led me to acting. Moreover, my dad being an actor, I have grown up in a very filmi environment. I was encouraged to watch films since I was a child.
I tried to hostess... but they fired me after four days because I couldn't figure out how seating plans worked.
