When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe.
I'm overwhelmed by the pain in the world; I'm affected by the news very much, and adding that to my work was becoming a little bit too much.
The cavemen, when they saw the antelopes, they had to scratch them on to the caves because they needed to express the immediacy of what they were being affected by - and I love that. That is why I do what I do. I need to express myself.
My uncle is a hemophiliac, and my brother is one as well. I am a carrier, and it's a disease that my kids also deal with. It's something that has affected my family and I for so long, and I think it's actually what drove me to comedy as a means to cope during tough times.
I'm really easily affected by horror films. I have pretty strong reactions to them.
I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.
I'm the cofounder of Keep a Child Alive. We provide medicine for families affected by HIV and AIDS in places like Africa and India.
We develop social systems for the handicapped, but when you're handicapped in your mind, society doesn't handle those situations well. I think we don't recognize or acknowledge the power of messages and how deeply affected we all are by the messages we receive from the media.
How can you not be affected by disappointments relating to work you love so much?
The harshness of my upbringing did not affect me in the negative. But it has affected many people in the negative.
