I'm learning kite surfing. It's a little surfboard you have on your feet with straps, and you have a big kite like a power glider in the air that pulls you. You don't need waves to move, and it makes a big spray of water as you go.

A movie I must have seen 10 times is 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' It's an old movie, but still such a beautiful message. If I had only one film I could take on my computer on a desert island, I would take 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.'

In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainability.

Very often, human beings are living like on autopilot, reacting automatically with what happens. What interests me about the life of an explorer is you are in the unknown; you are out of your habits.

The obvious thing to me was, let's take freely floating masses in space and measure the time it takes light to travel between them. The presence of a gravitational wave would change that time. Using the time difference, one could measure the amplitude of the wave.

My family was very Halloween-friendly, for all of the religion and whatever was going on.

My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.