Exending movieclip class with your own movieclip and how to create children in it

1

I was writing actionscript for a custom movieclip class I made.
Created my movieclip in flash and linked it as Dude class.

One question: Is it possible to override the constructor? I tried to do it but flash gives me an error “duplicate function definition”

Another question: How do I create a displayobject in this movieclip? I tried to do something like this inside the actionscript for the Dude movieclip.


var mytext:TextField = new TextField();
// code to change textfield's properties
addChild( mytext );

But when I created an instance of Dude on the stage the textfield isn’t showing.