"Gail has had a hard life. She had a difficult childhood and disastrous marriages. So, we thought what viewers really want is a happy ending for her, so that's what we're doing."

"The greatest moments in life are when you overcome fear," he says, admitting his own childhood terror was the shark in Jaws.

Alongside a childhood holiday photo of himself and his sister, he wrote: "Over the years, we have climbed many mountains together. As a family, we will climb this one with you too."

He recalled a childhood where his dad would half-jokingly tell him: "I don't care if you don't like guns, it's the law."

Days before Christmas, Republicans in Congress tried to ram through a spending bill that strips childhood cancer research from the federal budget.