I'm from Long Beach - not the best area in the world - and I had a lot of ghetto friends growing up.

If I was to do anything besides acting, I would be a fireman or a beat cop. I'd do a regular job.

When you're young, it's all about the society of school and being cool, but they don't understand that somebody can be different and live a different lifestyle and still be a regular person. I was the same way when I was a kid.

As an actor, you're always worried about getting stuck on a show that's not good because working actors need the paycheck. So being cast on a regular procedural, where everything gets wrapped up by the end of the episode, was always a fear of mine because that doesn't really test you as an actor.

My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.

I was not interested in luxuries because I had an elegant life as a child. My family, very aristocratic, one of the richest in Colombia, educated me like a princess, in the English style.

At some point, parents may become inured to a child's self-destruction, but I never did.

Willie Nelson, out there 200 days a year, calls his band family. And it is.