Ilana Mercer Quotes

The man who raised me is black. Culturally, he made me who I am. He was a theatre director, so he also guided me artistically.

My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer, my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence.

A lot of things come down to your roots and how you're brought up.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

I am the son of an illiterate father and mother.

I was raised in a family where my father was the first one to go to college.

I was raised with Eddie Fisher as a father and Connie Stevens as a mother. It was sort of hard for me to pick anything else, because this was the life I knew.

I'm a child of academics.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

My parents instilled a strong work ethic early on in my life.

My family have shaped my politics more than anything else.

I think if I'd been born ten years earlier when Ma was at the height of 'Avengers' fame, it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether, but she was very much a ma first and an actress second for my formative years.

We grew up in the South, but in a very liberal household - both our parents are from the Northeast.

There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me.

I'm a product of the different - whether it be institutional racialism, whether it might be growing up in a low-income area, whether it might be, you know, coming from my mother, my father. I'm a totally different person from my mother and father, but once again I'm from them. We all have our different souls, but I'm from them.

When people ask what it's like to be an only child, I say it depends on who your parents are. I was lucky.

I lived with my mom my whole life; her work ethic was ridiculous, and it hasn't changed.

I grew up in a humble family with a shy personality.

My passion is from my mom. She was passionate about leaving Germany and coming to America and making a life for her and her family. My father - discipline, a chain of command, it works this way.

My dad's from Barbados, but I lived with my mum. She brought me up; my uncle took me to the football. I grew up in a white family, I'd say.

My mom was born in Jamaica and has always been around a community of black people, so she encouraged me to get out and act. My dad, on the other hand, is from suburban Massachusetts, so he had not been around a lot of black people.

I come from a family where I have been empowered.

My dad was this pint-sized Nigerian with an oversized personality. My mother is a tall six foot something Irish-English woman. Us walking down the street was quite an unusual sight, when I was growing up.

I was born and brought up in South Mumbai. My father, Jagdeep, is a businessman and a Sindhi. My mother is half Brit and half Muslim. I am thus a cocktail of mixed blood. From the time I remember, I wanted to be an actress.

My parents weren't cultured people.