I realized I'd built up walls and carried grudges for years. I had a lot of animosity, dating back to when I was growing up, toward people who told me that what I was doing datingwise was wrong.
The fact that I had spent so many years doing media criticism and thinking really seriously about theme and structure did definitely help. Doing that for several years indirectly built a lot of tools that I would end up using when writing my own fiction.
When I was growing up, I didn't realize that the idiosyncrasies of my mother's character had something to do with our culture. After growing up and reflecting and making more Asian-American friends, I learned that a lot this is something a lot of people grow up with.
A lot of people get up to the top of the pile, maybe get one No. 1 contender match-up, and if they lose, they drift into obscurity. I lost, and I went back a bit. But I built myself back up. Three times.
I think for me, growing up as an only child, I didn't have a lot of people around me or a lot of foreign influences, so growing up, I really kind of got lost in my imagination - for the better.
I criticize a lot of players and coaches. But I back it up with facts. A lot of times guys get mad at me because someone told them what I said. I say, 'You're wrong: Go check the tape.
I criticize a lot of players and coaches. But I back it up with facts. A lot of times guys get mad at me because someone told them what I said. I say, 'You're wrong: Go check the tape.'
I started a modeling agency and I had it for about five and a half years and it was the same time I was actually working with the WWE and doing SmackDown. It was really the same principles; because me growing up I didn't have the support, I wasn't told, yes you can do that; you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.
I grew up a huge jock, a lot of basketball and football. We had a pond in my back yard growing up, and we played a lot of hockey, too. I loved to score goals.
I had years of therapy to recover from this. A lot of it had to with being a people pleaser, being the ultimate good girl. I wanted everyone to like me. I didn't really have a voice. I was afraid of growing up.
I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me. Where I always felt like I'm not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don't want to come off egotistical.
I had to grow up fast. I had a lot of obstacles to overcome. It made me a lot stronger, growing up like that.
Growing up, I realized as an actor I had to figure out how to use my platform in order to give back.
I realized that conventional views of Christian faith that I'd heard when I was growing up were simply made up - and I realized that many parts of the story of the early Christian movement had been left out.
My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. They had a lounge act in Las Vegas, where I was born. The band broke up and the marriage dissolved, and my mother, my sister and I moved to Southern California. And I didn't see my dad a lot growing up; he was on the road a lot. I'd see him every couple years.
You do stand-up because you have to do it. If you're doing it to become 'famous,' you're wrong. If you're doing it to become a millionaire, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. In 2003, I was flat broke. I'd been doing stand-up for 14 years at that point. I loved it and just kept at it.
When I was growing up, my parents always told me that I had to do what I thought was right and not listen to other people. That was hard for me.