I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother, Evelyn, was an actress and singer, and my father, Jack, was an actor. My earliest recollection of my father is being taken to see him in a matinee.
Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.
My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.
My father was a screenwriter, but he was also a novelist.
My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.
My father was an athlete, a great athlete, fought in the Marines in World War I. He was all sports and activity. My mother was all academics. I still have the complete works of Shakespeare that she had.
It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
I have always thought of Walt Disney as my second father.
I'm a junior, so my dad's name is Thomas Rhett Akins as well. So literally, from the day I was born, it was Thomas Rhett. It wasn't Thomas or Rhett, it was Thomas Rhett.
I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies, and Loony Tunes cartoons.