On my mother's side I'm Polish-Jewish, and on my father's side I'm Scottish puffin.
My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.
My whole family, my father's side, there was a great deal of depression, and my mother's side as well.
My mother's side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It was conservative in that I had strong values - sitting down and eating with the family every day, listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at Sunday school.
On my mom's side, the Jewish side of the family, I come from a family of musicians who are pianists, so I've always loved cultural expression.
My father, my uncles, my aunts, from my father's side and my mother's side... they were all professional musicians. My father was a concert master, he took me to a lot of rehearsals, concerts, performances, opera, ballet. For me, that was life.
I was raised Catholic primarily by my mom's side of the family. But at 18, I found out there was an adoption in the family, and that I was of Russian Jewish descent on my mom's side. After that, I started to look more into the philosophies and culture of Judaism.
I'm part Spanish. My paternal grandfather came from Spain via Singapore to Manila. On my mother's side it's more mixture, with a Filipino mother and a father who was Scotch Irish-French; you know, white American hybrid. And I also have on my father's side a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. So, I'm a hybrid.
I've got my huge Greek family. I mean, I don't know how many cousins I have - I can't even keep track. There are just so many of us, and we love all Greek food - we have Greek night every Sunday night.
I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service.
My family were Conservative Jews. My parents were both born in this country, but my father grew up on the Lower East Side, and my mother was born and raised in Harlem when there was a large Jewish 'colony' there. Eventually, they moved to Jersey City to get away from New York.
A human being has a lot of sides, like a kind of diversity, so it's like a good side, a bad side, a crazy side, a normal side, like a man-ish side, a woman-ish side.
I grew up in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery, in a very loving, wonderful family: wonderful mother, wonderful father. We attended church; we went to Sunday school every Sunday.
My mother - who's from Iowa - owns and runs her own day-care centre, while my father's a developer. And my musical influences, I think, came from my father's side of the family.
In my family, we let our boys have a say in what veggie side they want for dinner that night. We list off a handful of options and get them excited about helping to plan the dinner menu. They're much more inclined to finish their plates when they've helped decide what goes on them.
My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway.