When we were making 'Toy Story,' my grandmother was very ill, and she knew she was not going to make it. I went back to visit her, and there was a moment during that visit that I had to say goodbye, and I knew I'd never be seeing her again. I looked at her and knew that I was looking at her for the last time.
I remember my grandmother taking me and my sisters to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. We would watch the diving bell and see the diving horse jump into the pool. We would take the bus there, and I just smile thinking about all of us running around the pier on those days.
When I was a kid, I loved really loud things. My grandmother and I went to the Fulton Mall, and I bought a three-piece suit that was paisley. Paisley over the whole suit. I was 6 and thought it was great. My mother took a photo of me in it, sent it to my grandmother, and burned the suit.
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.
I fell in love with music at the age of four, and I remember my grandmother being on the piano teaching me some church songs, some primary songs.
When I was in college, the bell tolled for us. Just as my grandmother, the woman who had cared for me all my life, started needing me to care for her, we were told our home was being torn down, and we would need to find another place to live.
I remember reading Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' in my grandmother's Moscow apartment and feeling this call to be a better person.
I always drank chocolate milk growing up and I remember my grandmother would always have it when I would visit her in the Dominican Republic - that's when it all started.
I am extremely close to my grandma. Growing up, she would always do my hair; she was always the one who would make me chocolate milk or rice when I came home.
I had a very close relationship with my grandmother. She actually helped raise me.
My grandmother played the piano, and I used to toddle over there and pick out little things that sounded good to me.
I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. I thought that this electric typewriter was about the most fascinating toy in the world - I liked the little bell and the sounds and the feel of the keys and especially the erase key.
My maternal grandmother would sit, before binge-watching existed, and watch 'Poirot' until the cows came home. You couldn't pull her away from it.
My grandmother would take me to the cinema quite a lot. She'd take me with her and sometimes she'd sneak my sister in, and then we'd sometimes just sit and watch the movie again.
My grandmother played a huge influence in my life and helped raise me, and she and my mother saw how much I loved pro wrestling and how much I wanted to go after it.
I was a math whiz who stunk at English, so of course I wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world. I performed impromptu plays for my grandmother's sewing circle but forced my little sister to ask for ketchup at McDonald's.
I used to spend summers in the Czech Republic with my grandmother. I'd watch Czech cartoons.
What I continuously remember is when I was a child in the courtyard with my grandmother and we milked the goat and we made the ricotta. The still-warm ricotta from our goat, on top of a piece of bread, and we used to sprinkle just a little bit of honey or sugar on it. That flavor, that stays in my memory.
I grew up close to my grandma.
I started listening to gospel when I was a little boy and my grandmother used to rock me on her lap.
I'm quite a shy person, but I know I'm a good football player. That's just the way I am. That's the way I grew up. My grandmother brought me up, and she is the same way. She's understated, but she knows what she's worth.
My grandmother raised me for a good portion of my life. She moved to Los Angeles with me to be an actor, so I've always had a connection with an older generation.
My grandmother was a big Elvis fan, and I am, too, because she played Elvis, and she would keep me all the time when my dad was out of town.
Food has always been in my life. Being born in Ethiopia, where there was a lack of food, and then really cooking with my grandmother Helga in Sweden. And my grandmother Helga was a cook's cook.
My mom has a tape from when I was, like, 2 years old, talking with my grandma, telling her a story that's really elaborate about werewolves and wolves.
