mom

I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.

My mom is a really good cook. I didn't get the cooking gene, but she cooks this really amazing dinner every Christmas, and that's always really fun.

To me, acting used to be just, 'Get my face out there, get girls, make a little bit of money, make my mom proud.' It was just like sports. But there were moments in 'Moonlight' that I really felt like I had to know why he is the way he is. Or just people in general - why this person walks around with a frown on their face instead of a smile.

My mom devised a plan to get me out of the house and gave me the choice between ballet or skating. She knew both of those sports were time-consuming and would keep me busy with hours of practice.

I rarely felt or noticed any real divide between girls and boys when I was growing up. Maybe it was because I was so involved in sports and competed with the boys. Maybe it was my mom and dad, who constantly instilled confidence in me and never made me feel as though there were boy activities and girl activities.

My mom was really cool. She's the one that gave me the mentality about believing in myself and trusting it, that I was always gonna be okay, and that I could do things in a special way. She just pumped me up, you know?

I got to say 'Hi' to Dolly Parton, which my mom thought was kind of cool.

That's the hardest thing about being a mom. You want to be cool, and you want them to like you all the time, but you can't always have that. You're gonna have times where you have to say no, and you won't be the most popular person in the house.

My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.

I remember going with my mom to a random garage sale as a kid and thinking what a cool treasure hunt that whole world was. Only to transition as an adult to think, 'What a gross place that really is.'

My real last name is Flores, and Milian is actually my mom's maiden name. So it's not made up, which is cool; it runs in the family. And it actually worked out better for my career to have the last name Milian, because Flores kept me in a little box, and no one really associated me with the last name Flores.

I like to buy girls shoes and jewelry. I buy stupidly expensive shoes. I got Louboutins for my mom and my girlfriend before. My mom was like, 'I can't wear these; they're too high.' I was like, 'Mom, you have to try them - they're so cool. They're red snakeskin!' She still wears them every so often, but she can't walk in them.

When I was younger, I had a perm, and it was really big. My mom was a hairdresser, so even my dad had a perm! I looked like a poodle, but it was cool at the time.

My mom was my main influence growing up, and Phylicia Rashad reminded me a lot of my mother, just the way she handled certain things, she was... not soft-spoken but smooth-spoken. Just very calm, cool, collected about things.

My mom used to model when she was younger, before she went to law school, and I think she thought it was pretty cool. I think my parents saw that acting ultimately made me happy, even though it was a rough ride for a little bit.

I did find some time to go to a record store and check out 'Headstrong' actually in the racks. It was pretty cool I never thought I'd see my own CD sitting there with everyone else's. I made my Mom take lots of pics!

My mom was really cool.

When I'm singing, it's a mixture of my innocence in the projects, my mom and dad. It's all the good and the bad, the laughs and the frowns that I went through and seen other people go through. Then you be trying to write it. Whatever's coming out, you try and make it all cool.