Growing up, my sisters were both into dancing, so I went to a lot of dance recitals, mostly because there were always pretty girls in leotards.

I'd like to extend my career a little bit into different genres.

People are getting cynical about the news. It doesn't seem like there's one place to watch where you get the straight dope. You watch the channel that proves your point.

Being polite and grateful will make people more inclined to help you. And if people are willing to help you, you may accidentally get something you want.

I hardly knew anything when I first arrived. I had to learn how to act as I went along. After about a year I got a grip on what acting was all about and it started coming straight from my heart; I wasn't just saying the words any longer.

In the week following Sandy, we weren't flooded, but we were without everything else - I ended up living by candlelight - no phones, no computers, no light, no power. If we took a walk at night to go and find something to eat, it was completely black, with no lights coming out of the windows, no street lights: a very apocalyptic feeling.

Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the 'stove' - the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn't let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset.

School work and intellectual interests such as music and the arts were not especially important to me while I was growing up, although mathematics, my favorite subject, was fun. Baseball was my first passion: I played sand lot and Little League and rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers.