I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'
I've had fans do some pretty awesome things... I once had a fan do a mock proposal for me in Mumbai, inside a McDonalds... and I've had fans give me some precious things. I had one fan give me her mother's ring; I've gotten some pretty intense stuff. And I always get drawings and scrapbooks from fans, which is also pretty cool.
When I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.
I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.
I always say I stumbled on the information about the poison in Hinkley's drinking water because I was sort of stumbling about in my life at that time generally, as a single mother.
My parents, who were split up, were so good at keeping my environment strong and keeping everything around me not focused on the fact that we were poor. They got me culture. They took me to museums. They showed art to me. They read to me. And my mother drove two hours a day to take me to University Elementary School.
Whatever is said about roles drying up, I intend to keep working. Certainly now the roles couldn't be more interesting - playing mothers, divorcees. I think it's going to be exciting to play a mother of teenagers. The longer your life, the deeper it gets.
If you know anything about ducks, you know a baby duck will imprint itself on you. It misses its mother.
My mother encouraged it so much. She was so supportive. Even if as a kid, I would do the dumbest trick, which now that I look back on some things, she would love it, she would say that's amazing, or if I'd make the ugliest drawing, she would hang it up. She was amazing.
My mother's no dummy. She taught the lesson about sacrificing for your kids, but also that if your kids hit it big, they better make it up to you for those years. She's gotten her sacrifices back with interest.
I'll keep writing 'Dune' books as long as my mother's spirit continues to support the project.
What drew me to the character is that Roberto Duran is the son of an American soldier - a Marine - stationed in Panama and a humble Panamanian mother, and he was abandoned.
If I dyed my hair, my mother would actually disown me.
My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.
I have a very non-existent, dysfunctional relationship with my biological mother.
I know it affected me when I saw certain actors growing up. I had a drama teacher that would take us to see plays in New York, and it was seeing James Earl Jones and Raul Julia - I mean, this guy comes from the place my mother comes from. He's doing Shakespeare right now, and it doesn't seem to matter that he has an accent.
The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.
My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.
My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.
My own parents divorced when I was six. I was raised with my brother Joel by our mother on the East Coast, visiting my father in Los Angeles during holidays. When your parents are divorced, you don't know anything else, do you?
