I'm very much half-American - my mom is American. I grew up in Australia until I was 16, then I finished high school over here because I got into this performing arts high school.
Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.
I actually graduated from the Chicago Academy for the Arts. I think John Cusack did as well.
I've danced my whole life. Martial arts is just fun for me, it's all choreographed a bit like dance. I have done Muay Thai and Wushu, which is cool because it's very fluid dance. I also do Tricking. It's kind of like Taekwondo with the big kicks and flips and showier aspects of martial arts.
I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
Once I dedicated my time to mixed martial arts, I became careful about what I let into my mind. I made a goal of being the best on Earth in mixed martial arts and fighting. I wanted to build my mind into something good, not just of the world. I wanted to be different.
Neither my MFA from Yale School of Drama nor my BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University make me any different from other actors in film, television, or theatre.
I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.
There's also the tradition of voodoo, the Haitian magic arts, in New Orleans. And because New Orleans is below sea level, when they bury people in New Orleans, it's mostly above ground. So you have this idea that the spirits are more accessible and can access you more easily because they're not even buried.
I think a culture can really be elevated through the arts, and it's always a dream come true when I come across roles that enable me to fuse my love of storytelling with my passion for activism and raising social awareness.
My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas. I'd just sort of gravitated toward the arts, and I had always loved music and really loved theater even though I didn't want to act.
I went to a Canadian college for performing arts and then I auditioned for Canadian Idol. That honestly was my golden ticket.
I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living.
I love art and I think I was destined to end up in some aspect of the arts.
I started my own martial arts school at 16. And by the time I was 21, I had three different schools.
Prior to going to college, I had a pretty strong accent, and that was one of the things I had to work on a lot. I went to North Carolina School of the Arts; my speech teacher... that was one of the things we really had to work on over the years, and thankfully I think it finally worked.
My grandma was actually a pretty well-known opera singer in Cuba, and then my mom was a ballerina. Two of my three sisters are dancers, so we grew up in the arts.
I think if I hadn't had the dance background, it would have been much harder as a kid to be like, 'I'm going to be an actress.' But you're involved with one area of the arts and other things interest you. It feels like an easier move.
I am a huge mixed martial arts practitioner.
Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.
I went to performing arts camp, secretly taking classes - I got the lead in the musical, and my dad was like, 'Wait, I thought you were going here for music and knitting'.
I went to Northampton College of Further Education. I left there - when I was 16, I left Kingsthorpe Upper - and I went and did a diploma in performing arts, so it was my start in the training process to becoming an actor.
Compared to boxing, acting is more difficult. I have learnt martial arts and boxing since childhood. So, they were easier.
I consider myself fortunate that in my home, acting or the creative arts were a good option. This was a respected tour of duty in my family. Acting wasn't something that was left to tragic bohemians. But we weren't a family that obsessed on cinema.
Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.
The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you're most at risk.
I got out of this school and went to Camberwell College of Arts, a terribly prestigious thing to do. I was there to be a painter. And I sketched so well that, a year later, I was sent to Slade School of Fine Art, one of the great art schools.
I went to Baltimore School of the Arts, which is known for discovering Tupac and Jada Pinkett-Smith.
With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that. That way, if one fell apart, I always had something else to fall back on.
Communication is very important. And the arts do that, whether it's film or theater.
My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.
Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.
We've taken some performing arts schools on the set of 'Breaking Bad.'
Being an actress wasn't realistic. I knew that I was going to have to do it in a way that would speak to my parents. So I went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts for theater, and I studied at the conservatory.
My education in the arts began at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a Cleveland child, I visited the museum's halls and corridors, gallery spaces and shows, over and over. For me, the Cleveland Museum was a school of my very own - the place where my eyes opened, my tastes developed, my ideas about beauty and creativity grew.
Awards for arts, where you make comparisons, don't make much sense.