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. He was always so frustrated having to work to support the family that I was like, I'm never going to do that. I don't want to just be working a menial job to support my family and dreaming of being an artist. We learn from our fathers in that way.
My dad was in the Army. The Army's not great pay, but, you know, we moved from Army patch to Army patch wherever that was. The Army also contributed to sending me off to boarding school.
My brother and I grew up in a musical family. We have an older sister who sings and plays the piano. Our dad is a musician. Music was always a part of our lives.
My dad was depressed a lot of the time, and there were a lot of things in his life that he never resolved.
And my father left me a legacy of his handwriting through letters and a notebook. In the last two years of his life, when he was sick, he filled a notebook with his thoughts about me… There are times when I want to trade all those years that I was too busy to sit with my dad and chat with him, and trade all those years for one hug. But too late. But that's when I take out his letters and I read them, and the paper that touched his hand is in mine, and I feel connected to him.
At that point, I thought probably special effects, something like that, and indeed, the early days when I was working with my dad, after I left school, I only went to less than one year of college, and then I was transferring, and then I delayed my transfer, and I did a movie, and then another movie, and then I never finished college.
Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
I don't shoot anything. I could never kill an animal. My dad does all the hunting, and he eats everything that he kills.
My dad is a very snappy dresser; he gets all his stuff tailored. He's an architect, so he's a little more artistically minded.
I feel like I almost didn't grow up in the business, because my parents worked so hard at sheltering us from that. I was raised in Connecticut. And I honestly wasn't aware that my dad was a celebrity until I moved to Los Angeles a year ago.
When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.
The most important thing I do is I'm a dad.
When I was three, my dad thought it would be hilarious to teach me swear words, then have me say them to his friends. They would laugh and laugh. I realize now the laugh was pure shock value, but it felt really good, and I've been chasing it ever since.
I used to have a silk dressing gown an uncle bought in Japan and when I came downstairs in it, my dad used to call me Davinia. There was never embarrassment about that kind of thing. My sister used to dress me up a lot. She thought I was a little doll.
Kids really need love from two parents. It doesn't matter if it's a mom and a mom, or a dad and a dad.
My dad was a bedwetter; I think his dad was a bedwetter. I like to talk about it because it's something that I thought would be my deepest, darkest secret my whole life, and then you become an adult, and it's not.
Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-" "And, adding it all up. . . ?" "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.
I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.
My kids are not that interested in my movie career, by the way. My son, in particular, never talks about it. He just wants me as his dad.
I'll tell you something: my dad was a nuclear engineer and he was really bright, and I've always said that because of negotiating at such a young age with my dad, it was really such a gift because I could then negotiate with very difficult personalities - and not end up being the scapegoat. I learned to really pick and choose my battles.