You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian.
I like a little chivalry; I like to receive flowers. I like taking care of a son and a husband, and in my judgment, those who recoil from these things don't know what they're missing.
In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.
If you're trying to raise a son, it gives you a chance to say things like, 'Chop your own wood; it will warm you twice.'
When I cook with my son, I might chop vegetables and have fun with different shapes. Cooking is a way to teach kids about other things, like reading or math with all of the weights and measures. There are so many things that are part of cooking that are also very educational.
I help with everything. My wife and I are a team. I pack my son's lunches, and she takes him to baseball practice when I gotta go train. It's hand-in-hand. There are no labels on our chores.
As the documentary 'True Son' illustrates, my campaign for city council started really small - with eight mostly political neophytes in my living room and with young people knocking on doors.
The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations.
My son, he has a film group, a bunch of film nerds that sit around and screen movies, and when they had Mary Steenburgen Night, the two movies they screened were 'Melvin And Howard' and 'Clifford.'
We used to have a photo of me in full clown makeup taken when my son was 5. And when he was 17 or 18, he said, 'Yeah, that thing used to scare me. I hated that photo.' So it is scary; clowning is scary to people.
I always write back to people who are kind enough to write to me. Actually, I don't write - I recline on my red velvet sofa with my feet on the coffee table and dictate the letters to my eldest son.
I like it in Manchester. I thought it was going to be much colder, but it is not too bad. And my wife and son are happy here, too.
I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, 'My boy's got learnin'!'
Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income - which he then spends sending his son to college.
My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she's at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn't think it would be fair; plus, they didn't have any interest anyway.
I was born December 21, 1917, in Cologne, on the Rhine, the son of the sculptor and cabinet-maker, Viktor Boell, and his wife, Maria, nee Hermanns.
Today's kids have a mind of their own, and they know how to exercise it. Even if I wanted to tell Sara or my son Ibrahim how to lead their lives - which I don't - they would not listen to me. Luckily, Sara chose to complete her studies before pursuing acting. She attended Columbia University and then devoted her attention to Bollywood.
Six months after I moved to L.A., I booked the ABC pilot 'Commander-in-Chief' with Geena Davis. I played her son.
The death of my own son has made me more sensitive. It's made me more compassionate.
We are spirit children of a loving Heavenly Father who placed us in mortality to see if we would choose - freely choose - to keep His commandments and come unto His Beloved Son. They do not compel us. They cannot, for that would interfere with the plan of happiness. And so there is in us a God-given desire to be responsible for our own choices.
