When I was growing up in Ossining, N.Y., playing pool with the guys, the thought that any one of us might become an actor was as far-fetched as being knighted by the queen of England.
I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio.
In reality, I've always been an actor - since I was a kid. I did theater growing up in New York. I was always in the plays in school. I was either going to be an actor or an athlete or a soldier. Those were kind of the three paths that I always kind of embarked on.
My mother came from an Irish family of 11 kids and, of course, had a sister who was a nun, so I spent time at a convent and with an aunt and uncle who lived in New York and took me to the theater.
I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera.
I was very much an only child who was raised by the television and movies, and I grew up in New York. We weren't, like, rich people, but we were middle-class people and my parents supported this love I had for entertainment.
I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.
My dad's French, and I spent my summers in France growing up. So I speak French fluently, and obviously, I speak English because I was raised in New York, and I grew up here.
Growing up in New York, I loved watching my grandmother Estee put on her make-up - I always admired her sense of style.
I grew up in New York till I was 5, and I remember going to see 'Annie' and some musicals as a kid, and I remember my parents being somewhat okay with us watching 'Rocky Horror Picture Show,' which, it boggles my mind that they allowed me to watch it.
I grew up in a semi-attached row house in Queens in New York. And my family and my grandparents and my father's from Brooklyn, and so you're essentially an outer boroughs kid, you're growing up.
Being Puerto Rican, born and raised on the streets of New York, you go, 'Wow, you're still friends with your ex, man? Really? That's weird.' I don't play that.
