You'll never forget your first love — that's what we hear about relationships, but is it the same for careers or personal interests? The answer is yes.

Jack Lord was one of those actors who stood firm on his beliefs of not letting the media get away with hidden agendas before it became normal in Hollywood for creatives to defend themselves. Unfortunately, this resulted in him being seen as "difficult" or "rude." Beyond that, though, he was an actor with many talents.

It wasn't love at first sight for him and acting, but it was with another creative interest. "These are pencil sketches I'm doing for a book," Lord said as he showed his sketches to a journalist in 1972 during an interview with the Courier Post. "It will be called 'Jack Lord's Hawaii,' my view of the islands. It will have 40 pages of color in it."

Of course, you can't sketch a view of Hawaii without flowers, and Lord was somewhat of a flower expert. "You might call me a flower freak. I am constantly fascinated by the colors and the type of flowers Hawaii has."

This is when he revealed that art was his first love.

"I never thought I would wind up as an actor. It was the farthest thing from my mind. When I was little, I would paint by the hour. At New York University, where I was going for a football scholarship, I would be sitting somewhere painting while the others were on dates."

So, how did he get into acting? During the Korean War. "In the Korean War, I was asked to illustrate books. What changed my life was a training film I did about life abroad ship. After I did it, I was asked to narrate another. Then I began to think of acting as a possible career."