Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Growing up in New York, actor Kirk Acevedo says he learned early on to be self-reliant. “Having lived on my own since I was 16 in a big city taught me to be very self-sufficient,” says Acevedo, who portrays Ricardo Diaz — aka The Dragon — on the CW series “Arrow.” “I trust people very slowly. And then I suffer no fools. And for these skills I have to thank New York City. I always know who’s walking 20 yards behind me and then who’s 20 yards ahead.”
“The best travel memory I have is a proper Sunday lunch with my wife’s family in Brighton, England, where she grew up,” says MAX, 25. “It was just beautiful and magical to feel so at home in a place I just got to that day for the first time. The worst vacation memory was in Puerto Rico with a terrible ex of mine when I was 16. We were in a massive fight and two guys walked past hollering at her, so I cursed them out. They (started) yelling that they were gonna shank me. Definitely thought I was gonna die. It made me learn not to curse people out, especially in foreign places.”
“Alex, Inc.” actress Tiya Sircar says that the most important thing she has learned from her travels is “to be open to new experiences and accepting of other cultures and ways of life. Travel provides us such a wonderful, rich education. Experiencing new things, meeting people from different walks of life, learning foreign customs and trying new foods — it’s hard to be narrow-minded and ethnocentric when you’ve done all that.”
Former football player Isaiah Mustafa is known to TV viewers as Luke Garroway in the Freeform series “Shadowhunters: Mortal Instruments.” He also won an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial for his work in the Old Spice commercials.
Terry Crews is many things: Actor (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), furniture designer, artist, Old Spice spokesman and former NFL player. But the achievement he’s most proud of these days is raising his voice on behalf of the #MeToo Movement. TIME magazine recognized him as one of the Silence Breakers in its Person of the Year cover this past winter.
“I didn’t really know what hip hop and rap was when I was in (South) Korea,” San E says. “And then I moved to Atlanta when I was in middle school and just naturally started paying attention to it, because it was everywhere. I was lucky, even though I didn’t think so as a kid. Atlanta has a lot of great musicians. The music scene is pretty diverse and I was just going with it.”
In the hit film “Love, Simon,” Clark Moore plays a high school student named Ethan, who — unlike the titular character — is out and self-aware of his sexuality.
“One of the things I love about dance is that it has given me the opportunity to see the world,” says Maks Chmerkovskiy, who grew up in Odessa, Ukraine, and New York. “It gave me the opportunity to see things I never could have dreamed about as a little boy.”
After winning two bronze medals at the PyeongChang Olympics this year, Alex and Maia Shibutani made history by becoming the first skaters of Asian heritage to medal in ice dancing. “It was really special, because there hadn’t been a tradition of ice dance success for Asians,” says Alex, 26. “Whenever we compete anywhere in Asia, we always feel adopted and embraced by the locals.”
Though Chelsey Crisp is a scene stealer for her portrayal of Honey on ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat,” the actress says she often goes unrecognized when walking around with her husband, screenwriter Rhett Reese. “It takes hair and makeup a long time to turn me into Honey,” Crisp said, laughing. “I’m very pale, so they have to put a tan on me and make my hair very big. It really is a process, but it’s so much fun playing her.”