When I was younger, me and my dad worked really hard. We did it the hard way.

If a guy wants to take me out, he must seek my dad's permission first. That's just the way it works.

I try to be a friend to my boys just the way my dad was with me. Subconsciously that reflects in my writing.

My kids are not that interested in my movie career, by the way. My son, in particular, never talks about it. He just wants me as his dad.

Dad's influence naturally came into me, rather than trying to emulate every detail. His way of teaching me was to be sparse, and to be explosive when it needed to be.

My dad taught me really early so I could take a lot of pressure off my elbow. Because the way I throw it, it doesn't crank up my elbow like everyone else's curveballs.

I was very protected growing up. My dad was very strict with me. I was the oldest of four kids, and there are three girls. So I kind of paved the way of what it was like to raise a teenage daughter.

Growing up in Australia and the way I was raised, my dad told me to play as a team and to be a team player. You have five guys on the court. It's easy for five guys to defend one guy. It's hard to guard five. It's just a natural thing to do.

If you're a girl, you're always Daddy's little girl. You're vulnerable, no matter how worldly or sophisticated or strong you'd become along the way. My dad Lionel let me know how proud he was, even as he kept me from being too big for my britches.

My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.

Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn't enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was - the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips - seemed to always prevail and attract Dad's disdain.

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