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Terry Crews opens up about family, faith and his decision to live a positive lifestyle
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In a recent interview with ABC News, the actor said he grew up in a fairly religious home in Flint, Michigan. - photo by Herb Scribner
Terry Crews had to beg his mother to see Star Wars.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Crews said he grew up in a fairly religious home in Flint, Michigan. His parents barred him from playing sports (he went on to have an NFL career), dancing or listening to music.

He also couldnt see movies.

It was kind of wild because of the church we were in, you couldnt go to a theater, but you could watch a movie on TV. It was so weird, he said.

Crews begged his mother, though, to let him see the 1977 space opera that achieved global fame. He made a deal with her that he wouldnt watch all of it. All he wanted, he said, was a half-hour.

His mom, then, let his aunt take him to the movie.

It changed my life. I said, This. Im going to be involved in entertainment somehow, someway. I didnt know I was going to be an actor, but I was like, Somehow, someway, this changed my life, said Crews. But it came out of a very sad time.

Now, Crews doesnt let movies change his personality or inspire him. He finds positivity in his own ways.

A lot of people dont realize it, but you have to make a decision to be happy. You have to take the day. And what happens is, if you dont take every day, eventually you forget how to take it, forget how to be happy, he said. Youll go weeks and months and years and you dont realize you could have taken it every day. So its a decision.

Read more from his interview at ABC.

Crews, who now stars at Terence Terry Jeffords on the Fox sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, made headlines in recent years for combatting pornography, the Deseret News reported. In 2016, he published a Facebook Live video where he said the adult material messed up his life.

Pornography it really, really messed up my life in a lot of ways, Crews said in the video. It became a thing where I didnt tell anybody. I didn't tell anybody. It was my secret. Nobody knew, and that allowed it to grow, and it got bad.

Since overcoming his addiction, Crews has worked alongside Fight the New Drug, a campaign to battle pornography.