My first paying job was a in a production of Neil LaBute's 'Bash: Latter Day Plays' at the Union Street theater in Borough. I played the 'Medea Redux' character. That was my first job out of drama school. I can't remember how much I got paid. I'm sure it was pennies.

I find I have to respond to a character or a story to choose a job.

Watching my stepfather and mother working in the industry - acting and composing - and seeing firsthand how difficult it is to achieve a successful career in the theater, I thought it might be safer to go to art school with the aim of becoming a painter.

Producing is a wonderful foil to being an actor: acting being largely about getting out of my head, being present, a little irresponsible, whilst producing is the polar opposite. You need other players to act; you can't act in a void, but producing is about making something out of nothing - conjuring a thought or an idea into reality.

We opened Panda Inn on June 8, 1973. The whole family - my parents, a brother and sister - all worked at the restaurant for free. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in San Gabriel and didn't have any money.

My father, Cecil Banks Mullis, and mother, formerly Bernice Alberta Barker, grew up in rural North Carolina in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My dad's family had a general store, which I never saw. My grandparents on his side had already died before I started noticing things.

When I'm ready, I plan to adopt. I still believe in family.

My mom's father came from a family of 11 children who came over from the island of Ischia, Italy, and settled in Providence, RI. Her mother was part of the large community of French-speaking Canadians who settled in Woonsocket, RI.