I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.
I gave up my childhood for a career.
I've spent various periods of my career being thought of as various things, various degrees of substance and ideas.
My career as a magazine writer was largely prefaced on the idea of curiosity, to go on adventures and weasel my way into the lives of people that I admire.
Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.
My career choice was to be a mother.
William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others.
If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life.
Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.
As a kid, I think I wanted to be the on-set dresser for 'Charlie's Angels'. My goals weren't lofty. No. I just wanted to someday quit my paper round and that was about it.