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I felt like I had two fathers. I had my real father and the father in my head.

Our public portrayal of fathers has shifted during my life. TV fathers have 'evolved' from real people like Sheriff Andy Taylor, Beaver's dad Ward Cleaver and Heathcliff 'Cliff' Huxtable, to cartoon dads like Homer Simpson and Seth MacFarlane's caricatures in 'American Dad!' and 'Family Guy.'

I think all parents have a double life.

Having robbed children of any sense that their Father is in Heaven and that they are His creation, we then launched an experiment in raising them without earthly fathers too. Having neither a Father in heaven or a father in the home, many young men make gangs their families.

'The Big Girls' has always seemed to me to be a story about different kinds of families - a divorced mother with a child; a father with his child and his girlfriend; a mother of three children, suffering from postpartum depression; and the rigid artificial families maintained by women in prison - all potentially perilous.

'Story of My Life' was essentially a two-man musical play. In hindsight, I don't know if there was room for a two-man musical on Broadway.

I have played 50 different kinds of fathers and villains. Only mediocre actors play the part the same way.

Some people had fathers who were bankers or farmers, my father made films, that's how I saw it. As for the movie stars, they were just around, some of them were friends, others weren't, it was all just a part of my everyday life.

In the modern world, it may be that a living father can only be half a father to a boy - the dead father is the other vital half: the half that grows the boy up once and for all.

The stories in 'Parenthood' are so much the stories of our lives. And the people who have worked on the show feel very connected to these characters.