A majority of Bon Qui Qui is my little brother, who is ghetto fabulous. He has no filter whatsoever. He just says what’s on his mind.
The only day I remember of my parents’ marriage was the day my dad walked out. As I stood there at five years old, with my older sister and younger brother, I knew that he was gone.
I’ve got no interest in football. My brother’s a footballer, too, and I was dragged to the freezing pitch every week as a child. I don’t see much glamour in it.
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.
My little brother and I took piano lessons at a young age and played music together later on in life just to play around at home until we decided to make a record. Eventually we started having more and more songs.
I grew up in Michigan, so I played hockey, football and basketball. I played a little bit of lacrosse, too. My brother played more lacrosse and ran track.
If you age with somebody, you go through so many roles – you’re lovers, friends, enemies, colleagues, strangers; you’re brother and sister. That’s what intimacy is, if you’re with your soulmate.
People are always coming up to me and saying, ‘I love you, love your work.’ And then the next sentence is, ‘I loved your brother.’ John made people laugh, and laughter is a powerful thing.
But as my brother was doing his research for a book about my father, it became his opinion that the most influential anti-semitism my father encountered when he was growing up was from Jews, because his relatives were German Jews, and doctors.
My father’s family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn’t a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude.
There are a lot of things I can take, and a few that I can’t. What I can’t take is when my older brother, who’s everything that I want to be, starts losing faith in things. I saw that look in your eyes last night. I don’t ever want to see that look in your eyes again.
Everyone knows that if you’ve got a brother, you’re going to fight.
My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.
There was a year between school and getting going as an actor when I basically just watched films. Video shops were the new thing, and there was a good one round the corner and me and my brother just watched everything, from the horror to the European art-house.
When I was training, I trained with my younger brother Brady. I would wrestle some of my friends, who I had grown up with, which showed me some moves, but it was never a full on match. When I went to competitions, there were other girls, so I always wrestled girls.
I’m writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I’ve brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.
My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pacifist.
I started training judo when I was 5 years old. I didn’t know much. My mom just took me and my brother to do some judo because we were very energetic. We did that for a couple of years. I don’t know why we stopped, but I came back to try other forms of martial arts like kung fu and karate when I was 12 and never stopped.
My mom and dad put my brother and sister through university and they were very keen for us to have an academic background just to give us a chance.
My first job, 9 years old, part-time, was selling Christmas cards door-to-door. Ten years old, my brother and I had paper routes. We delivered a morning paper called the ‘L.A. Examiner.’ Get up at 4 o’clock, fold your papers, deliver them and get ready for school.
Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.
I was the youngest child and got a lot more freedom than my brother and sister. I used to wander, doing my own thing under the radar, but I didn’t get in bad, bad trouble.
I met a hundred men going to Delhi, and every one is my brother.
My brother and I had unresolved things. I just wish I could have had one final conversation with him.
When I was really little, I wanted to be a wrestler so I could be like the girls I looked up to. My brother then told me that ‘You don’t want to be like your idols; you want to grow up and be better than them.’ To this day, that’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten.
Honestly my brother has always supported me through everything and I can’t wait to support him 100 per cent.
My parents didn’t give me any scope to feel sorry for myself. They were just like ‘go play with your brother, go climb a tree, go fall off your motorbike, do whatever you want. Don’t come crying to us when you get scratched. You’ve got prosthetic legs – that’s very nice.’
I always say, ‘Honor thy mother and go to war for my brother.’
When my older and younger brother came to live in this country, they were attacked on numerous occasions and had to defend themselves. This was a country where it was hard to assimilate, it was difficult because a lot of people didn’t want you here.
I have an older brother who has autism – James.
My brother Alan – who was seven years younger than me – died from leukemia when he was 52. He never knew a day’s good health – I wish I could have given him some of my good health. But he was always so cheerful and sweet.
As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by ‘survival of the fittest.’
I saw how, when my brother smoked reefer, it made my mother cry. He was 16 at the time. And I saw that she broke down and cried. I never wanted to hurt my mother, so I kept away from drugs.
My main teachers were my father and my mother and my brother.
Some people ask me whether I’m a ‘mama’s girl’ or a ‘papa’s girl.’ I’m nobody’s girl. My brother clings to our parents; I’m the one shoving them out the door.
My brother went on to have a long and sordid career.
I love putting myself in survival simulation. Whenever I get an off, I often go out for camping, and thanks to my brother who has taught me all the survival skills.
It’s part of the gift and the curse of coming behind my brother. I’m not afforded the luxury of just taking a set casual, taking the night off. Because if I bomb, it’s, ‘Oh, he’s not funny – he’s just doing it because of his brother.’
In high school I had a boyfriend who was super into rap, so I was into Too $hort and Wu-Tang for a little while. And my best friend’s older brother would sometimes drive us home in this pimped-out truck, and he’d play all his dirty rap music. We thought we were really cool.
My brother Martin is two years younger than me. There has never been any competition between us – clearly he was the good-looking one; he was also very sporty, and I am not a football player.
I went to my first dinosaur hall with my father and twin brother. We went to the American Museum of Natural History, and I was blown away by the dinosaurs.
I’ve been in scenes with my brother where I’ve been absolutely emotionally terrified to go somewhere. But because he’s my brother, I feel safe.
I chose to be Mrs. Johnny Cash in my life. I decided I’d allow him to be Moses and I’d be Moses’ brother Aaron, picking his arms up and padding along behind him.
It’s time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!
My brother and I always had jobs and worked from a young age.
I adored my brother when I was younger, so I wanted to do everything he did.
My brother was a big marathoner. He was a great collegiate runner at Beloit College. He won his conference’s races, and he did tons of marathons. I would go out and run with him every once in a while just to hang out with him.
I don’t just wanna be James Franco’s little brother.
We all have, in my family, what we call the ‘Vorderman bottom’ – a sticky out, bigger-than-normal, signature, of the rear variety. It’s been a family joke all our lives – even my lovely brother has one. I know the lines to all the good singalong big bum songs.
I grew up in what some would call an immaculately clean home. I hated my mom a little for it. I wasn’t allowed to paint my nails, since they’d chip and ‘look trashy.’ My brother and I didn’t run around in clothes that had holes or were stained.
I’m really not into technology at all. My brother has to plug the Xbox in for me.
When you go somewhere like Kenya and you see how the children don’t have pencils and pens, and all of these things are considered luxuries, and what a privilege they see education as and how hungry they are to learn, I wanted to give my brother and sister long lectures. That definitely stayed with me.
When we started with ‘Big Brother’ and created the reality genre, no one could ever foresee that there was so much space in the genre that it could deliver so many formats. There will be periods where there is not enough new stuff to keep the genre alive. But it will never die.
