I'm lucky, I don't like sweets, not even chocolate.

I love photography. My boyfriend's got a great camera, which I bought for his birthday.

Before I got Doctor Who, I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I went back to take the final grade exam, which is the grade you have to take before you can take the teacher's diploma.

I jumped out of an airplane on my 34th birthday because I promised myself I would. I have an interest in confronting my fears.

I was talking on the phone in my trailer, and I looked in the mirror and I saw the badge clipped to my belt, a gun with a holster, and the suit and the tie with the jacket off, and it was just deja vu. I remember that image so clearly from growing up. My dad would come home for lunch, take off his jacket, have the gun and the badge.

The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed.

A great teacher who is full of excitement and love for her students can make all the difference in their lives.

The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the 'myth of Mario' was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.

My son had his eighth birthday recently and we had a chance to borrow the film and show it to all of his friends that was at his birthday party and they loved it. I was a little nervous. I said they might not even like it, and say his daddy's movie is wack, but they loved it.

The hope is they would like to bring it to Broadway next year, so we'll see that's to come in the end of the finance year and everybody else and also real estate and what theaters are available at the time but I would like to come back with it.

They decided as part of my 75th birthday celebrations that I would be entitled to fly first class. I'll be honest, I'm not good at flying anymore. To my credit, I can stretch out on two coach seats.

And for the city's birthday, we will host events in every neighborhood of the city, inviting all of our residents to share in the celebration of Boston's great epic - the story of neighbors who support one another where it matters most.

Here's what I see all across this great city - people working together to make Boston a better place to live and to raise children, to grow and pursue dreams.

Prince Charles was once obsessed with a particular beauty, Anna Wallace, and couldn't understand why she walked out on him after he spent the evening dancing with Camilla at the Queen Mother's 80th birthday party.

Indeed, the Royal Family still retain the German custom - introduced by Prince Albert - of opening their presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning.

My husband was a serial adulterer, and there was nothing I could do about it: no questions I could ask him, no argument I could have with him, no explanation he could give me or pleas he could make for forgiveness.

The Queen has well-informed opinions of many of her bishops and likes those who are straightforward and intelligent. Both she and Prince Philip believe Christianity is as much about forgiveness as morality.

There was never any question of Prince Philip's four sisters being invited to his wedding to Princess Elizabeth. King George decided their connection to Nazi Germany was still too shaming.

As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Queen feels she cannot be seen to smile in church - and her natural reaction is to combat mirth by putting on a stern face.

An army environment is very protected, a walled city kind of environment, where everybody has the same income, you have the same birthday parties, you are given return gifts - everything is the same. Everybody is moving up at the same pace.

I am a pretty emotional person. Any act of kindness or unkindness moves me. When I see a romantic couple sitting by the beach, it moves me. I don't break down or crack under pressure, but I am just sensitive.

Anytime I have communicated with college-going people, fresh out of college, looking for a job - money is very important, that is just so important. What is not important is how do you plan to live your life or the larger picture. Not that I had such philosophical intentions when I was 18, but I think there was lesser importance for money.

I remember for my 18th birthday, I was going to get a tattoo, and I made the mistake of thinking I was a man and telling my father, and he was like, 'Oh yeah? You better tattoo a new address on your arm, because you're not living here!' And that was the end of that discussion.

It fits my ADD, so that's good. Because I really can't focus on anything for too long. And 'Top Gear's really the easiest thing to do because I'm with my pals. It's like coming home with my friends. We're having so much fun making the show.

One I built when I was a kid, and it was a real miniature of Disneyland. I fell in love with the park when I went there with my parents on my 12th birthday.

I went to a rare live Van Dyke show and met him there. And then he came to a show of mine and we spoke back stage. The third time was at Brian Wilson's birthday party.

The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.

I'm trying to get the record that I made at my birthday party last year, trying to get that out, and the lawyers are diddling around with it and it probably won't be out until next year. I don't know.

The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe's house because Mam' Grace was slipping away, only I didn't register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday.

The Obama years will be remembered as a cultural - and legal - tipping point for equality for all people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual, arguably the civil rights movement of our times. The president signed the bill repealing 'don't ask, don't tell.' The Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court.

America is not static. America is striving. And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism. You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.

I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.

I love to swim for miles; I could just go back and forth.

What bugs me is that movies don't reflect how interesting and vibrant women are. We don't treasure women as they get older.

Jewellery's not a big thing for me. The only thing I wear is a gold cross on a chain that I got for my 21st birthday. You have to take it off every day for filming, but that's the only time I'm not wearing it. You won't find me in rings, bracelets or earrings.

Most artists don't get paid for what they do, and they are lucky if they can persuade a friend to let them show something at a kid's birthday party.

There weren't any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday.

I think it's going to be a very important, unique data set in terms of measuring the behavior of your lower body in space and trying to figure out what we can do to preserve bone and muscle density.

I sing a little bit. I got a guitar for my 16th birthday.

My mother still sends a cake to the office for my birthday.

I lost twins at 14 weeks, and I had to have an D and C on my birthday.

My philosophy has always been, 'do what you love and the money will follow.'

Even when I was a kid, I had a good thing with kids. To this day, if I go to a birthday party with one of my kids, I swear to you, I am so much happier hanging out with my kids and their friends than talking to the grown-ups.

I just think that sports movies have such a built-in visceral, rooting interest, an epic win or lose redemptive quality. When they get it right, it can make for a really rousing movie experience.

The only show my mother could afford to take me to when I was growing up was 'Cats', for my birthday.

I'm an avid shoe fan. I got my first pair of Louboutins as a birthday gift from Jami Gertz.

Having a sweet, wide-eyed, awkward character is more charming and allows for more range. If you come from anger, you're going to reach a ceiling very quickly.

The first comic book I ever read was an issue of 'Legion of Super-Heroes' where the earth was surrounded by all of these chains. I remember the cover; I got it at a birthday party.

I've died so many times. I'm 65. On my 40th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a reel with ways I had died, whether it was by knife, or electrocution or drowning or being thrown off a building or whatever it might have been. I've died a lot of times!