After music, trees are my passion. My great-grandfather was a forester, so maybe it is genetic. My father would take me for walks in the forest and sometimes I would play truant with him. 'You won't learn anything in a communist school, my boy,' he would say. He loved trees too.

Krzysztof Penderecki

But the most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.

Adriana Trigiani

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.

Alan Garner

My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.

Aliko Dangote

Both of my grandfathers fought in the Second World War, and my great-grandfather died at the Somme in the First World War. I never truly believed that the War just finished and everyone was happy-clappy, brought out the bunting, and felt everything was okay again. That's definitely not my impression of the fall-out of war.

Andrea Riseborough

My father, John, ran the Dowd Insurance Co. in town, which was started by his great-grandfather. My mother, Dolores, was a homemaker who kept an eye on all of us.

Ann Dowd

Now that I know about my great-great-grandfather, I feel that John Reid and I would have got on well together.

Anne Reid

As a fluke, my great-grandfather hit one of the largest oil reserves in California.

Armie Hammer

My great-great-grandfather Julius founded the Communist Party in New York.

Armie Hammer

A male can be a boy, a man, a love/husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, but they don't have any knowledge what's happening inside a woman's body. That's what I had learnt in my early married life.

Arunachalam Muruganantham

The family on my mom's side, their whole business is inventing and pitching stuff. My grandfather is in infomercials. He's a pitchman, so if you're ever watching TV late at night, you'll probably see him pitching knives. My great-grandfather also invented the plastic cheese grater.

Ashley Tisdale

I come from a line of railroad men. My great-grandfather was a surveyor for the Burlington Railroad.

Bill Moseley

There might well have been an Irish great-great-grandfather of mine back then in the 1800s.

Canelo Alvarez

Smoking-related heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather died in their early 40s.

Chloe Madeley

My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.

Christopher Plummer

Discovering that my great-great-grandfather Harry was Australasian clog-dancing champion in 1871 was extraordinary.

Craig Revel Horwood

My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling.

Dan Aykroyd

My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?

David Hyde Pierce

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

Dick Van Dyke

Both my New Hampshire great-grandfathers wore facial hair: the Copperhead who fought in the war and the sheep farmer too old for combat.

Donald Hall

I live in the house my great-grandfather moved to in 1865... I spent all my summers here as a kid haying with my grandfather, and it was my favorite place in the world.

Donald Hall