When I was around 12, my heroes were Cindy Sherman and Bob Dylan and Samuel Westing from the kids' novel 'The Westing Game'.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My history was the Western. I grew up with the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I felt as much a child of the West as someone born in Montana or Wyoming.
I grew up with the television product being old Western serials like Roy Rogers, and John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and many others were my favorites when I was a young person going to films.
In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow managed to get the role.
I was about seven or eight years old when I first heard West Side Story, and it had a huge impact on me. If you look at the elements of that record, it contains many of the things I enjoy doing today.
I grew up on Harold Lloyd, Charles Chaplin, and Buster Keaton, and those were the ones who inspired me.
My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.
My influences were Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.
I came out of high school, where my heroes were, like, Michael Jordan and a lot of local rugby players - and on the movie front, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy... but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican.
I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.