My mom being a psychotherapist, I've been brought up with that whole psychoanalytical terrain.
It's so funny because my mom is Thai and my dad is this big American guy - and our food tastes were so similar growing up. He was meat and potatoes, I was meat and potatoes.
Yes, my dad's a marathoner. He used to do sprint distances and then started marathoning. My mom is an endurance animal. She does three-day events like the Susan G. Komen three-day walk.
My mom was scared of the old Times Square so I was never allowed to go. Now I'm scared of the new Times Square, so I still never go.
My mom worked tirelessly on getting equal rights for women.
I've been fascinated with severe weather since I was four, when I saw a tornado at night in my mom and grandmother's southeast Minnesota hometown while everyone else was asleep - an experience I encoded in 'The Stormchasers.'
I have been tossing around the idea of writing some non-fiction. Maybe a collection of short stories about my experience being a mom and how not to be perfect.
My mom used to say that I became a fighter and a scrapper and a tough guy to protect who I am at my core.
My mom and I have always been there for each other. We had some tough times, but she was always there for me.
My mom was probably the biggest influence. She cooked dinner every night. We sat around the table every night. It was a very traditional family.
My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.
I grew up in a bus, traveled with various circuses and freak shows. I was a trapeze artist, and that was my dream. We just traveled the whole world, me and my mom and my little brothers and sisters. It was an adventure.
I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere.
When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing 'Edelweiss' because I knew it from the music box.
My father was a truck driver, made $50 a week. And the reason why I know that so vividly is my Mom used to just constantly give him a hard time for that.
I did a film called 'Victor' that I'm really proud of! It was a period piece and the true life story of Victor Torres. I play his mom, and it's a very moving film.
My mom's made it clear to me that, like, there's no trust fund.
When I was a kid, I would come home from school, and my mom would buy the industrial-size Famous Amos cookies or Chips Ahoy when I was lucky. And I would sit in front of the TV set with a glass of milk... and I would dump cookies in there, smash them with my spoon, and eat cookies and milk with a spoon watching 'The Dukes of Hazzard.'
You can be tweeting strangers and saying, 'Don't say that,' but are you saying that to your friends? How about your mom? Your boyfriend at the dinner table who says something homophobic? If you're not saying the same things in person that you're saying online, then what are your tweets doing?
My dad is Chinese, and my mom is a white American, and they married only ten years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to ban mixed marriages. Imagine that. Marriages between people of different races - now common and accepted - were illegal in many states up until the late Sixties.