Young people, for whom I should have been a role model and an uncle, duplicated my worst habits and died as a result.
I spent a lot of time on farms when I was young. My uncle and my dad owned a big farm.
I grew up on Charles Addams' cartoons, particularly 'The Addams Family,' and Uncle Fester was always one of my favorites.
Historically, narratives of forgiveness were part of both the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement in America. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' for instance, was based loosely on the life of the Rev. Josiah Henson, who forgave his master that wanted to sell him and beat him after Henson begged him not to.
They've got great parents; I'm just trying to be the fun uncle.
My grandfather and my uncle both died from colorectal cancer, my dad almost died from it and I have the gene for it.
My family originally lived in Brooklyn. Our first apartment was a little place above my father and uncle's hardware store in Coney Island. Now, don't get the impression that we were surrounded by merry-go-rounds, roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Nope, this was a little side street.
I loved reminiscing with my dad about his matches with the Bulldogs and his partnership with my uncle Bret Hart as the Hart Foundation.
I begged and begged, and my uncle gave me his old turntables. It was one hi-fi and one old Stereo Lab turntable and a rusty mixer. I was really chuffed. I kept that for five years - that's where I learned to mix.
The beautiful thing about having family that has diabetes is knowing what not to do. I got an uncle that thinks insulin is supposed to enable him to eat cake.
My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I'm very 'preacher-ish' on stage, not by intent but because that's where I learned to talk in front of people.
I met Jack Nicholson when I was about 10 at a party of my uncle's, and it wasn't so much that I knew his films because I was small, but he wore sunglasses inside at night and I thought that must mean he was very important and was suitably star struck by his charismatic presence.
I have a lot of respect for His Majesty Juan Carlos. I call him Uncle Juan because he is an extraordinary person whom I have known for a long time.
I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.
A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'
My uncle is a martial artist, and in the early '80s, he made a kung fu flick with director Charlie Ahearn.
When Liza Minelli was a child, she used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Sammy.
Country artists, I met a lot of them when I was five, six years old. I had an uncle who was a country and western singer and I met Lefty Frizzell when I was five or six years old in those shows that would come through Toronto from Nashville.
Why did I want to become a director? I just had an early interest. My uncle was an actor in a local community theatre, and he ultimately persuaded me and a buddy of mine to come to that theatre, and we went to meet girls, and that turned into interested in kind of behind-the-scenes things, and from that point on, I was focused.
My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.