I always wanted to be a stay-at-home dad making art making movies.

I had the opportunity to go to law school and my dad who was an accountant couldn't believe I wanted to walk away from that and start cooking.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke the poet.

I mean my dad's a television producer and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.

My mom and dad met at Anaheim High School. After they got married all they wanted to do was have four children and they did.

My father came from a very poor background but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn't want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had a better shot at a better life.

'I Know You Care' is about my dad. And I haven't seen him for a long long time. And my parents divorced when I was really young. And I guess I just wanted a - it was my way of saying that I wasn't bitter or angry anymore. I was just sad and just felt like something was missing.

My dad got me a huge board when I was little. He loves to surf. He suited me up and sent me out on this huge wave. I went under and when I came out and the board hit me in the face. So I said I never wanted to do this again. I stayed away until I was 13.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s when I was 5 years old my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

I always wanted what Mom and Dad had.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please.

I wanted to take up music so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.

There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.

Well number one I like dancing. Number two I knew it would be challenging because I had never done this type of dance before. I always wanted to and I happened to have the courage to go out there and give it my best shot.

I went through a long period where I was afraid of doing things I wanted to do and you get your courage back which is what's important.

Definitely River Phoenix is somebody that I thought 'This guy is very cool.' I wanted to be like him when I was a kid.

I hated the idea of a high school sweetheart. Growing up oh my God it just made me sick. I wanted to have a range of cool boyfriends. I wanted to travel around and date these interesting men. Then it just happened. You fall in love.

I'm getting a lot of stick because my character in 'Young Dracula' wanted to be vampire so now that I am a vampire everyone's like 'You finally did it!' But it's cool and I loved doing 'Young Dracula.' That show's finished and I don't know why it ended so it was brilliant to go into 'Being Human ' which is like the adult version of it.

White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes but hip-hop and R&B changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied the culture. It's kind of a cool thing because we shouldn't be so separate.

I went to engineering school which I thought was what I wanted to do for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool but I was like 'There is no way this is going to be my life.'