My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.
I had a very normal childhood, and my mother cooked very normal food.
My mother raised us out of the limelight and told us not to say we were Bruce Lee's children, so I had a normal childhood. I didn't run in Hollywood circles or go to premieres.
By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars - it was a very normal house, and I'd like my daughter to have the same thing.
I'm just a normal girl. People have these preconceived notions about what movie stars are about and how we've grown up. My mother is pretty regular and raised us just like anyone else.
I don't believe in pretending to be someone else. I'm what I actually am in real life. For instance, like any normal girl, I fight with my mother. I mean, it is just fine. In fact, I fight daily with my mother.
I get great joy from creating the perfect Norman Rockwell holiday. This is why I think I might be Martha Stewart's brother from another mother.
My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.
In 1967, my mother - then Francie Weinman - graduated from Northwestern University with a degree from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism. But because she is a woman, the only television news job she could get in her hometown of Chicago was as a secretary at a network affiliate.
I can remember when I was a baby and my mother was there watching the show. I went and bought 100 episodes and watched them. I respect it so much that the sitcom itself and Ed Norton; I'm not playing Ed Norton but my version of it, cause I'm a black man.
I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian.
I think that's the most beautiful thing about being confident - just loving yourself, not caring what everybody else thinks. Because you could be Mother Theresa, and people are still going to try to find some imperfection.
I started drawing when I was about 2, mostly pictures of my mother and my sister. When I got into school, instead of taking the notes that I should have been taking, I was drawing in all of my notebooks. It was an artwork thing for me at first.
You have kids growing up in some of the worst circumstances financially, living in some of the worst ghettos, and they succeed. They succeed because an adult figure, typically a mother, maybe a grandmother, nourishes the kid, supports the kid, protects the kid, encourages the kid to succeed. It's as if the environment never happened.
My mother's Mohawk and my father is Scottish/German from Nova Scotia.
My mother brought me numerous times to visit Orton as a child, and I have visited the gardens with my children many times. Orton is a gem on the Cape Fear River and I am excited about our restoration efforts to bring it back to its original landscape.
You know who you are. If my mother is a nun and someone comes up to me and they go, 'Your mother is a prostitute.' It is not going to bother me, because I know my mother is a nun, she's not a prostitute.
If I could have gotten my way at an early age, I would have entered the priesthood, but my mother informed me that I could not become a priest because I was a girl. It really was the biggest blow to my ego, because it was my calling. When she told me I'd have to be a nun, I looked at her and said, 'I'm not following anyone.'
I always wanted to play a nun, and to play the Reverend Mother was a thrill of a lifetime for me. But, generations back, my family were not churchgoers, which is an unusual thing in the United States.
And I thought, you know, I have to say that maybe the whacked out mother is my new favorite role, but I don't want to just do it and become Nurse Ratchett.
