I grew up a competitive swimmer. I wanted to go the Olympics. Both my parents were professional swimmers. I competed internationally quite often, right up until I moved to California to pursue music.
One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn’t learn about the outside world.
I grew up in a family that was very musical, learned the blues and everything like that. And I became a little bit frustrated with the simplicity of rock n’ roll and blues. I started listening to a lot of classical music – mainly Bach, Vivaldi.
I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn’t enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.
When people tell me that I must get my maverick gene from my father, they are only half right. My father and I both have inherited our rebellious personalities from Nana. She has always lived her life on her own terms, something that was once considered quite scandalous, given the times she grew up in.
I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state.
I didn’t go to university; I hardly went to school, but I grew up among people well versed in Henry James and Proust, and just felt this endless, total inadequacy.
I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was.
I grew up on Cape Cod. We didn’t live right on the water, but I could walk to it and did every day.
Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They’d earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make ends meet.
I grew up watching guys – like, I loved Mick Foley’s ECW promos; I loved CM Punk’s promos. There’s this guy, Eddie Kingston. He was just a fantastic talker, so I used to study and watch him. I mean, gosh, there’s just such a big list of guys who I used to study. I used to watch promos as much as I did matches.
I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave.
Comedy is a universal language. I grew up watching Nagesh, Surilirajan, Thenga Srinivasan and S.V. Shekhar’s comedies. And, of course, Charlie Chaplin! These artists are so blessed: they can make other people happy.
I’ve got quite a big gay following. I played a lesbian prostitute in the TV series ‘Band Of Gold’ but I think my following really grew when I played one in the film ‘Imagine Me & You,’ with Piper Perabo.
I grew up where the repercussion of you having an opinion was being ‘cocky,’ or people would be mad at you. And I have finally learnt that it is better for them to be mad at you and disagree than you be so mad at yourself all of the time for not speaking up.
You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!
Highbridge – everybody rap in Highbridge; everyone grew up rappin’ or playing basketball.
I grew up peeling shrimp and making tartar sauce.
My parents know I was outgoing as a child, and whenever people came over, I’d automatically do impressions of them as soon as they left; it was my mom’s favorite thing. Yes, I grew up in Hollywood, but not in any rich neighborhood.
I grew up in Chillum Heights in the Washington, D.C. area., and it was never a garden spot. When guys go, ‘Hey, when I grew up, my neighborhood was tough, and it was this and that’… the reality is that it was just a terribly sad place. And thank God, I was able to escape it.
I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.
I grew up on the back of a motorcycle – my dad didn’t have a car until I was a teenager.
I was born in Westchester, NY. I grew up around the Rye Brook area, and then I moved to White Plains with my family.
I never, ever grew up as a young woman believing that my gender would stand in the way of doing anything I wanted.
I am an unconventional beauty. I grew up in a high school where if you didn’t have a nose job and money and if you weren’t thin, you weren’t cool, popular, beautiful. I was always told that I wasn’t pretty enough to be on television.
I grew up playing on unprepared surfaces where your wicket depended on quickly adapting to the bounce. As a kid, I could never differentiate off-spin from leg-spin. All I looked to do was to try to hit the ball before it pitched.
I grew up in a semi-slum area in Gavipuram, Guttahalli.
I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation. I do think there’s some value to really throwing yourself into food and embracing where it comes from.
I grew up as an only child and my mother was also an only child, so we were both very passionate about reading. I think I passed that on to my daughter, who went plowing through ‘Harry Potter’ and every other book possible!
My family loves movies. My dad and I used to eat a huge breakfast, and then we’d just go hang out at the theater all day together. We loved movies like ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘James Bond.’ We were both big action-adventure movie fans. So I kind of grew up with an appreciation for film.
I grew up in Nova Scotia, and my uncle lived close to the Bay of Fundy. We would walk across the mud flats out to an island, and then you’d climb a cliff and be in the forest. And if the water came in, the basin would fill up with, like, a 30-foot tide. It was phenomenal.
After my parents’ divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn’t super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.
I grew up in Connecticut – it was really charming, but when I was younger, all I wanted was to get out.
I needed a lot of the good things that church provided. But as I grew older, it became increasingly hard for me to rationalize the importance of church in my life with the beliefs that it required that were at odds with modern science.
I grew up completely alone but with all the comforts of knowing I had a cushioning family structure around me – and yet I could free myself from it.
I’m a country boy. I grew up kicking around the woods, riding dirt bikes, playing football, climbing rocks and all that good stuff, so that’s always been fun.
I was born in Germany and grew up immersed in international school communities. I was in the German bilingual track, spent a few years in rural Canada, and then went to the United World College of the Adriatic in Italy.
I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything.
I lost some weight, grew my hair and now every woman in America over 40 wants to date me. It’s their daughters I want to convince.
I grew up listening to a lot of Chief Keef, Lil B, all that.
I love Air Force Ones. That’s the shoe I grew up with in Philadelphia. My older brothers got me wearing them and I just stuck with them. Everyone in the neighborhood used to wear them. It’s retro. It’s tradition. That’s me, old school.
I discovered and fell in love with skiing long before I started to climb. Skiing was really my first calling. As a kid, I grew up skiing in jeans in Minnesota.
I grew up on movie sets, getting to see storytelling happen up close.
I think losing out on jobs and, you know, being judged on your appearance… I definitely grew a second skin and got used to it, but more so now, I’ve realised it definitely contributed to a lot of things I feel about myself.
Anyone who grew up with me knows that Queen is my favorite band of all time.
I grew up in the countryside.
I grew up as a very sarcastic person. I was always the class clown, and to date girls, I had to be really funny. I was really skinny growing up. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin. So I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm.
I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.
Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.
The language has changed. When I grew up and watched the campaigns of John Kennedy, even with Richard Nixon, there was a lot higher level of civility. Now we describe a disagreement as an attack.
My memories of my childhood are wonderful memories. I feel that I was privileged because I grew up in a beautiful city. It is Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily. It’s a place filled with sun, close to the beach.
