I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films.
Entertainers, athletes, and stars started giving me support.
I started young. My first record came out when I was - what? 18? So I was in the studio when I was 15, 16.
The 1960s were big for folk music, and the Kingston Trio led the way. They were the ones who started it all. The music was fresh and alive. College kids loved it and their parents did, too.
I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business.
I just ended up focusing on film editing as I was getting my career started. I'm very passionate about editing and will continue to edit for the rest of my career, but it's not like that was all I did and then somehow I grew into directing a movie.
After that, I started going downtown and doing a lot of theater shows in Chicago. When you go downtown there, it's like you're in New York, it's like going to Broadway.
I started singing for The Phantom in January, and we started filming in October and I sang all the way through to the next June. In fact, I was singing for about two months before I even knew I had the role.
I had piano lessons at five and started guitar at ten, but although music and acting was always around me, my parents never pressured me into it.
Now the Kids Classic is one of the major fund-raisers for Children's Hospital. Since we started seven years ago, we've raised more than $1 million for the hospital.
I started writing when I was 9 years old. I was like this weird kid who would just stay in my room, typing little funny magazines and drawing comic strips.
Over the year,s the government launched more than one 'war on corruption,' and they all failed. Why? Because they all started from the bottom up.
There is a huge fan base; they're very knowledgeable and very loyal. I was astonished - before I started working on the series, I didn't know anything about 'Game of Thrones.' I hadn't heard of the books.
I grew up on musicals, and I know they are quite the thing now, but I'm actually a little indignant, because I started taking singing lessons years ago - I put the time in!
After wrestling with myself for six months, I began medical treatment. During that time I started a band with some friends of mine called Jack's Car, but that didn't last.
And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.
I had been very dismissive of popular fiction - in fact, I'd refused to read it. And then I started working on popular fiction, and I realised these books weren't the same as Hemingway, say, but they were good in a different way.
The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up all over the place, and most of those new products and new methods were developed by people who started their own companies.
I think my mom always wanted to play the guitar, and somehow she projected that to me. So I started learning to play guitar when I was five years old, but actually I'd never managed to get the academic side of it. So even up to today, I don't know how to read or write music.
I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.
We didn't have a garage to rehearse in. We had to aggravate the folks in the house. But I got a chance to play in a beer joint, and that's how it started.
There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.
What fashion has started from hackers? They have bad posture, and they don't go out. I wish I had a hacker boyfriend - they stay at home up in the bedroom.
When I was at school, I wanted to join the army. At college, I started acting in college plays, and it became a kind of addiction. I was very shy when I was at school, but the plays seemed to give voice to my feelings.
I think I've started to dream in American a little bit.
I started in the restaurant business at the age of 19 as a waitress. I loved the atmosphere and the camaraderie of the restaurant business. I loved not having to go to an office. I loved making people happy.
I attended Professional Children's School in Manhattan because my ballet and modern dance schedules were intensive and had started to interfere with regular school hours.
I probably wouldn't be singing if not for Michael Jackson. When I started singing, I didn't like my tone until my mom put me on to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, so listening to the way they used their instrument helped me get more comfortable with my own.
It all started when I went to this model search in Charlotte when I was 18. That's when I met all these agents and realized I could do it, and I won! I met a photographer at the competition who persuaded me to sign with a different agency than the one that was offered to me. So, I started with a small agency and eventually moved up to IMG.
My mom worked for a doctor who had a pool that he heated to 90 degrees, and I hated cold water. My dad showed me how to dive in that pool, and pretty soon I started doing flips.
I started as a working pupil in a yard, mucking out and doing all the duties... and I just never gave up on my dream.
I started watching some 'Doctor Who' recently on my own and got too scared. I had to watch it in the daytime - I'm pathetic.
Due to a big bust in Cuba, my father's business suffered badly, so I was free to choose my own career. I became a professional dancer, and I went on the road and started making real money.
I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records, so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.
I just turned 40, and it's weird to think that I've been doing this almost my whole life. I was a child actor and then didn't do it through junior high and high school, then started up again in my late teens doing 'Young and the Restless.' Dabbled with school, went back to college, played around. I think I was doing Pleasantville at 23.
I am just at that stage of wondering where I go from here. I came into this business almost by accident, but now it has become serious. What started as a bit of fun, something to do other than be a model, has taken on a different career curve. I have been forced to ask where that curve is going to end up.
