My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they’re beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.
My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It’s music that feels like home to me.
I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.
I started off with sim driving, playing ‘Gran Turismo,’ and my Dad had some sort of Logitech steering wheel with pedals for the PlayStation 2.
When my dad was badly weakened by the flu and my mom wanted to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room, he wouldn’t go unless he could shave first and change into a nice shirt and a pair of slacks.
‘Boy’ was about my dad.
There is nothing that would upset me more than my dad being bribed by the press. It’s like, ‘Just let them run it, then. Don’t you give them ammunition.’
My dad’s a doctor, and he’d watch ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and he’d be like, ‘This is not okay. This isn’t what it’s like.’ And we’re like, ‘Shut up, it’s not about that. That’s not why we’re watching it.’
My dad bought us boats. I think he thought sailing was a wholesome way to spend time.
Not at all, I wanted to go into medicine. I took science in college. But my dad was a Producer – Director in Kannada films, and someone saw me, and one thing led to another.
My grandfather was a lawyer, my dad was a lawyer, my mum was a lawyer, I got an uncle who’s a lawyer, I got cousins that are lawyers.
A lot of my success, and a lot of who I am now, is because of my dad, and the way he raised me and taught me how to have a work ethic.
We are foodies, we love to eat, my dad’s a chef, and coming from an Italian family, we love to eat.
My mom was as brilliant a cook as my dad is.
My dad was a musician. He was a singer and he played the guitar, so music was always around.
My dad being an Army officer, I was just born to it. I was raised in a military manner, and it was a given that Army brats went to West Point, so I went to West Point in 1941. And being in the military has been my life.
My mum is a school teacher and my dad is an electrician.
My parents came to this country after World War II, Jews from Czechoslovakia who had survived Auschwitz and Dachau. They settled with my sister in rural Ohio in the 1950s, where my dad became the town doctor and I was born.
Some article called me the most feared man in Silicon Valley. Good Lord! Why? My teenage boys got a kick out of it: ‘Dad, how could this be true? You’re not even the most feared person in this house.’
The confidence in my ability to be a performer, a steeliness about survival… I learnt all those things from my dad.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn’t put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
My dad was in furniture for 35 years. He got run out of furniture when everything went to China, went overseas. Manufacturing in the country broke down. Everything left.
Both of my parents were super music lovers when I was growing up – they had a massive record and tape collection. I think my dad even had a couple of laser discs, but that was a short-lived thing.
I could have ended up a casualty of a broken family, like so many of the kids around me in inner city Baltimore. But my life was forever changed the year I turned 10. That was the year my dad turned to Jesus.
My mum and dad always brought me up like that. You go to work, you do your best.
