The HAPPY CHILDHOOD is HARDLY WORTH your while.

The HIGHLIGHT of my CHILDHOOD was MAKING my brother LAUGH so hard that food came out of his nose.

My folks were drunks, and I had a ROUGH CHILDHOOD - REALLY rough - in FACT, rougher than I thought about.

There is ALWAYS one moment in CHILDHOOD when the DOOR opens and lets the future in.

My memories of my childhood are wonderful memories. I FEEL that I was privileged because I grew up in a beautiful city. It is Catania, on the eastern COAST of Sicily. It's a place filled with sun, CLOSE to the beach.

All my CHILDHOOD DREAMS have COME TRUE.

The MOVIES were so HEALING for me because I had such an isolated, lonely childhood. Going to the movies and having the LIGHTS go down, you disappear. If you have esteem issues, suddenly you're in a void where nobody can see you. You are just by yourself in that DARKNESS, and your loneliness is cured.

I grew up in a humble neighbourhood in Argentina called Dock Sud. From my house, about 200 metres AWAY was a FOOTBALL pitch. That's where I spent my childhood. It's a neighbourhood where everybody helped each other because there was a LOT of difficulties. There, I grew up happily, because I LEARNED a lot of things.

One of the things I WANT to do that's outside the REALM of acting and the ARTS - although both have their place in this - is ending CHILDHOOD HUNGER here in America.

I had an older brother, an older sister and a YOUNGER brother, and though I look back fondly on my CHILDHOOD, I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a SINGLE KIDS' bathroom, it's going to get a LITTLE tense at times.

Growing up in the BUSINESS you have to grow up very FAST - you do have a DIFFERENT TYPE of childhood, that has its benefits and it has its drawbacks.

Remember Graham GREEN's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all WRITERS FEEL ALIENATED. Most of US go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

'Crumbling' Down' is a very political SONG that I wrote with my CHILDHOOD friend GEORGE Green. REAGAN was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor.

When you get together with CHILDHOOD friends, for example, there's an intimacy that you instantly have because you SHARE something really PROFOUND in your past. There's a shortcut to emotional intimacy if you share your past with somebody. It's really empowering when you're reunited with PEOPLE who share that.