Always think twice before you decide to do anything for a film. It may seem like a career-changing idea, but think of your family and your future before doing anything risky. Train properly, because looking strong and being strong are two different things.
My whole thing is having the perfect balance. Let’s say I go to school. I have a day at school. That’s the perfect amount of reality. Then I go and play music with my band. Then I go home and hang out with my family and my pets. I think that’s the perfect amount of reality time.
We can’t just rail against crime. We must speak of the root problems – devastating family breakup, an insidious culture of violence that cheapens human life, skyrocketing prisoner recidivism rates that rob our communities of husbands and fathers – and recognize that there is a societal role in rehabilitation and restoration.
Besides acting, I love reading books, dancing, singing, and following a few sports. My favorite sport is tennis. I love travelling, and I see a new place every year. Luckily, my job helps me do that very easily. In my spare time, I also spend time watching English TV shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Modern Family,’ ‘House MD’ and a few others.
I’m straight and always have been. When our family gets together, we joke about it or throw our hands up in desperation because there is very little we can do. If we make a big fuss about correcting these rumors, it just creates more attention and turns the whole thing into a soap opera.
He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression… I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent. I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.
The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn’t always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn’t yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
I grew up in the countryside with the factory here, my house 200 metres away, my grandma’s house 50 metres away, in a kind of old-style Italian society where everyone works for the family business, everyone lives nearby, and the people you spend your time with are your family.
Although my mom and I had often disagreed politically and personally, she’d led our family by example, instilling in us a can-do attitude that often defied reason – an optimism many would call foolish, ignorant, and naive, but an optimism that occasionally shocked our neighbors and our world with its brazen veracity.
With movies, you come and go as an actor, especially if you are not the lead, from week to week. You don’t really have a lot of time to get to know anyone, and then on to the next thing. I know a lot of actors who find fulfillment in playing an entirely new character. I like to stick with one character and create a family with the people around me.
I was raised by my great-great aunt. I was adopted within our family. My mother had me when she was, I think, 15, 16. They tried to get her to have an abortion and she refused. So, my ‘mama’ adopted me, which was really her great aunt, which was really my great-great aunt, who was named Viola Dickerson. I was told that my mother was my sister.
I had an uncle who was a postal official at the Polish post office in Gdansk. He was one of the defenders of the Polish postal service and, after it capitulated, was shot by the Germans under the provisions of martial law. Suddenly he was no longer a member of the family, and we were no longer allowed to play with his children.
To a point, family does that and a couple of life experiences both positive and negative that have definitely altered my perception on rugby. Whereas my first 28-29 years, rugby was the entire focus, which was not that healthy, now you realise what is really important.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, ‘I’m transgender.’
I don’t want to let my guard down and feel too comfortable. If you become complacent, you start feeling entitled. I’m ready to go dig ditches if I have to. Whatever I gotta do to provide for my family. Whatever I gotta do to make sure that I do the best possible job at whatever wonderful opportunities I’ve been handed.
My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.
The credit of my good upbringing goes to my mother, who’s not only been a single parent to my brother and I, but she’s also been ‘our’ manager for the longest time. Our father, on the other hand, remained elusive and away from the family for most part of our lives, which left a certain void but also made us creative and reflective.
My family and I cook at home almost every day together. The kitchen is the central and most important room in the house; it’s a great way for us to connect. We love going to the farmer’s market on Sundays as a family and choosing the ingredients together.
It’s true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you’ll find you’ve created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.
There’s always a wine bully. The one person who did read the ‘Wine Spectator,’ who tells you what to drink and why the ‘97 is better than the ’98. I want to punch the wine bully in the face. I want to make sure this generation of wine drinkers isn’t elitist and snotty. I want it to be about family and bringing people together.
It’s a blessing that I have my family in my life and they were supportive, but there were times when I needed to find an outlet for me to understand my people and my own journey, and I found that through my chosen family, which was the ballroom community.
All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race – racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic – what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.
I work every day hard. I put my body through hell. Let me tell you, every year, seven months of the year, I don’t see my family. Year in, year out. I miss my kids. Kid’s birthdays, anniversaries. I’ll never be able to go back and be with my family.
The thing about aging is all your old lovers, pretty much if they were really friends, become your family. It’s great. You have those terrible feelings of possessiveness and uncertainty go out the window. You have what you shared. You know you would help each other in times of trouble no matter what.
I was an introverted kid; I liked my time alone. And the rest of my family is pretty extroverted, so I felt like a bit of an oddball. They’re very gregarious and charming and charismatic people. I always felt like I was struggling as a young person. I think everyone was very surprised to hear that I wanted to be an actor.
