There were nine children in my father's family and eight in my mother's. My grandparents did the best with what they had. After the Depression, they were scratching out a living and working hard. They kept the family going.
There were nine children in my fathers family and eight in my mothers. My grandparents did the best with what they had. After the Depression, they were scratching out a living and working hard. They kept the family going.
I had a very special family life. My mother and father made sure when we were home, we were part of the family, not a TV star. And the other thing: my father was fully employed while I was doing the series.
My mother was Welsh and I loved going to Wales every summer, where Uncle Les had a farm. My mother had seven brothers and a sister and they were all very close. There would always be food on the table and uncles coming in and out. My father's family were English and lived in London, and we didn't really see them.
My parents, like others of "The Greatest Generation" who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, wanted to provide the best possible life for their children. My mother and father both attended college but dropped out to earn a living during the Depression, working the rest of their lives at blue-collar work.
My parents would make huge crops of sometimes 55 to 60 bales of cotton. Being from a big family where there were 20 children, it wasn't too hard to pick that much cotton. But my father, year after year, didn't get too much money and I remember he just kept going.
Me I never had the chance to say,Well,I'm going to do something I want to do."I always did if for my family,for my children, for my father,for my mother."
There were never any doctors in my family. But my grandparents and my mother had a strong social conscience that was formative.
My parents' names were Florian and Mabel Smith. My mother's maiden name was Dersam. They were of German heritage and were part of a family community with my grandparents and uncles and relatives. I was an only child.
My mother and father had been through the Holocaust. The family was wiped out. I grew up never knowing aunts, uncles, or grandparents.
My mother was largely a housewife until she and my father were divorced. No one in the family read for pleasure - it was a very unintellectual household - but my mother did read to us when we were little, and that's how I started to read.
The only real experiences I've had with therapists were the ones who were working with me and my family when my mother was ill.
My family - my mother and father had gone through such a hard time that by the time I graduated from sixth grade, they were separated.
My father was from a secular Jewish family and my mother from a nominally Christian (Episcopalian) one. They were not religious as adults. They did, however, believe in educating their children about the Bible. They viewed this as an essential part of any education.
By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars - it was a very normal house, and I'd like my daughter to have the same thing.
We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.
My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars - not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road - and we were roped in.