Lana Parrilla Quotes

I knew I wanted to become an actor when I was 7 years old. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock, my mom was working with Martin Scorsese - and it was the great summer of my childhood.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

I was the youngest of six kids, so yeah, feeding myself was important, but it's not like I was obsessed with food growing up.

I did grow up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, around a lot of my mom's family. I had a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles around me, and my sisters and my brother. Probably the most formative part of it was that we grew up on the edge of a forest. It wasn't a big forest, but it was enough. When you're a kid, it feels gigantic.

Sitcoms always made the most sense to me. I grew up watching them every day with my dad. Every Monday, Tuesday night, we would be sitting in front of the television watching any kind of sitcom. I connect with that more, but I love to do whatever kind of role.

When I was five I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress.

My mother is an actress, and she used to drag me from theater to theater and reading to reading.

At 3 years old, I was imitating and doing fun little commercials for the family. Then at 5, I knew, 'OK, this is something I really like.' At 8, I was crying in front of the mirror and my mom was like, 'Oh boy, here we go. We know what she's going to do.'

My biggest ambition when I was younger was to appear on stage at what was then Nimrod, which is the theatre where my father used to take me on Sunday afternoons to see matinees. The most extraordinary things used to occur on that stage.

Now I'm the father of three young boys, I find myself using GoPro to film them more than anything - trips to the amusement park, the beach, the pool - just chasing them around as they grow.

At some point, when I was 14 or 15, the idea crossed my mind to become an actor... I hadn't been to the theater much... When I grew up, we had one TV channel, which was sufficient.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

The reality is, the movies that were most impactful to me growing up, when I decided I wanted to make movies, I was going to see Woody Allen double features with my brother, back when they had double features.

When I was younger, I grew up a Packers fan because my dad played for the Packers. As I got older, I've fallen away from it.

I didn't grow up, really, in the film business, even though my parents are both artists. I grew up in New York City. They would never put me into acting. I just kind of wanted it, and I told them that.

My dad worked for a theatre company that was two minutes away from my primary school, so I'd just walk there after school and watch the rehearsals. I think that's probably when I fell in love with acting and telling stories.

I was really sheltered growing up, with six brothers and sisters. We played together all the time, and I was living in a fantasy world, like most creative people.

When I was growing up, my mom didn't let me watch a lot of TV. She said I couldn't watch 'Friends' or that era of sitcoms.

Growing up, I was on film sets occasionally, when my dad was acting, so I got to run around and do odd jobs on films like 'Labyrinth' and others... I seemed destined to make films.

When I was 10, I had a group of friends that I used to love to make movies with, and we made them growing up; we did it all through high school.

Given my family background, whenever, as a child, I was asked about becoming an actor, I used to answer in the negative.

My grandparents, Jim and Pat Moore, were an incredible couple. They drove me to the community theater, where I did plays as a kid.

My father filmed me all the time as a kid, and that's how I was first exposed to a camera.

My father, Colin, and my brother, Chris, who is four years older than me, were a great help to me when I was younger.

My dad was my favorite wrestler growing up, obviously.