I come from a line of railroad men. My great-grandfather was a surveyor for the Burlington Railroad.
My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.
My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.
My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.
My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling.
My great grandfather was the last practicing Jew in my family. He died in 1982.
My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?
In 1881, my dad's grandparents, who were Norwegian farmers, immigrated to the United States - the same year my great grandfather from Laguna Pueblo was put on a train to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
I live in the house my great-grandfather moved to in 1865... I spent all my summers here as a kid haying with my grandfather, and it was my favorite place in the world.
If I were related to Monet, I don't know if I would be comfortable becoming an artist because it's too much, the comparison. If I wrote a book and put it out, the comparison to my great-grandfather, the comparison would be hilarious. Every critic, it would be their dream, they'd tear me apart.
