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I was trying to make art that my son could look on in the future and would realize I was thinking about him very much during these times… that he can look and see my dad’s thinking about me, but to also embed in these things something that is bigger than all of us.
Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.
To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off.
My dad keeps joking about sneaking into my grandparents’ house and switching out their HBO for PBS so they think I’m on ‘Downton Abbey.’
The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn’t putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It’s believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.
My dad never told me that when you audition, you might not get the role. He wanted to wait until my first disappointment to tell me.
My parents loved each other. I was raised in a house of total love and respect. My dad worked very hard and my mother was incredibly devoted to him. I can unequivocally, without any peradventure of doubt, tell you that I was raised with the kind of love that we only dream of.
For my birthday this year, my girlfriends – who knew I’d just inherited my dad’s turntable – gave me a carton of albums like ‘Blue Kentucky Girl,’ by Emmylou Harris, and ‘Off the Wall,’ by Michael Jackson. It’s all stuff we grew up with. I mean, you can’t have a music collection without Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ – it just can’t be done!
Dad is my best mate and I can tell Mum absolutely anything. I really appreciate Mum and Dad. Why are we so close? Young parents, I think. The rock business keeps their minds young.
I wasn’t aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children’s entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I’d say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, ‘oh, is he Ralph Harris?’ And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.