It's bizarre, that feeling as an actor, at being in the mecca of the film world and seeing billboards for a TV show that you're in pretty much everywhere.
When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.
The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.
In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living.
There was nobody in my family who knew anything about the film industry. I'm from the west of Scotland. It's not exactly a mecca for filmmaking. I think I saw Rab C. Nesbitt in Asda once, but that was about it.
I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.
Atlanta was a welcoming presence for a lot of artists; they called it 'the Mecca of the South.' I got to see the Negro Ensemble Company, Cicely Tyson, Geraldine Page, Ruby Dee, all onstage.
It's still amazing, but when I was growing up, Harlem was the Mecca of black culture. I was so inspired by it, the aspirational feeling you'd get spending time there. Experiences that were really specific to that place.
My mother gave birth to me on the floor of our apartment in Mecca with only my toddler sister to help her because my father was at work and no male guardian was available to take her to a hospital.
Sephora is a mecca for cosmetics, and it supports what I enjoy: You go into the store, and touch it, and try it, and love it. I've never bought anything on the Internet. I like experience.
