I can't even remember not wanting to go to film school.
I majored in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, although I never had any intention of being an illustrator and didn't take any classes in illustration there. It was just that the illustration degree had no requirements.
Hollywood producers aren't going to say, 'Get me that swearing, grey-haired, headless chicken. We need him for our new 'High School Musical' movie!'
The bad news in our most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities is that many middle-class people can no longer afford to live in 'middle-class' school districts.
I wish all high schools could offer students the outside activities that were available at the old Harrison High on Chicago's West Side in the late '20s. They enabled me to become part of a school newspaper, drama group, football team and student government.
I love directing actors. In the last few years, I have started expanding my directing into workshops for actors who truly want to grow and learn. My mom was a high school drama teacher, and teaching makes me very happy. My workshops are nurturing.
At school, people would say I should go on 'Britain's Got Talent,' but I would never have done that because it doesn't seem genuine; it doesn't feel natural.
I didn't necessarily fit in in high school. I felt very awkward. I still feel completely awkward and weird in my body sometimes. I'm hoping that's going to go away, but I've just embraced it as reality.
My mother worked in the white world, but I lived almost exclusively in a black world. I don't think I had ever seen a white teacher until I got to high school.
Instead of being on teams at school, I was preparing for auditions.
It's not like I grew up playing pranks on people, and I was not that girl in school.
I think your teenage years define your musical roots forever. You're always looking for a theme for your high school years.
I only ever wanted to be a model. This acting thing - three years of drama school - is an accident!
I work during the days and have night classes on Wednesday and Thursday and live with my partner, who is in school during the days and works Wednesday through Saturday nights. Monday and Tuesday are therefore our nights, and we both get our work out of the way so we can actually spend time together.
If you can reach people in their pockets, on their lunch breaks, on their commutes to and from work, on recess at school, and make things they want to see, that's an amazing thing for a show like ours.
When I was in high school, there was no safe haven, there was no outlet for you to speak your mind.
My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School.
I didn't win Class President in tenth grade. I was too chubby to win a role in the school play 'Oklahoma!' and I didn't make it into a singing and dancing group in high school for the same reason - too fat.
You're in high school, and you're telling your friends that you're skipping lunch to go write poetry, and they were all questioning my sexuality.
At school, we'd studied the Romans and the Saxons, and I was fascinated by it all. So I made my dad take me to the British Museum as often as possible.
You never grow out of high school sadly.
My entire high school career - my entire school career - I've been like three feet taller than everyone in my grade.
I was in art school since I was five years old. I've always been to art school. Everything that's happened to me, nothing's been planned. I've never had a business plan. I just kind of fell into it, and I liked it, and I took a chance. I took a lot of chances in my life.
My favorite days were when I had a cold and could stay home from school and draw all day long.
I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.
I knew I didn't want to pursue an academic career at all, which, of course, my father would have loved me to have done. I didn't want to go to university. The only other thing I could do was paint, and so I went to art school because they couldn't conceive of how one would be an actor.
I didn't go to drama school, so I feel like I did all my growing up on 'Hollyoaks.'
Everything I've ever learned about acting - and I went to theater school - was about playing what the character wants and throwing yourself fully into going after what the character wants.
I play guitar and sing when I'm not busy with school and acting.
I guess I was popular in high school.
You know, I was a regular on the Friday afternoon drill squad. Um, which... The year after I left school, I went back and thanked the sergeant major because I was so fit.
I went to college because I felt like I was supposed to. I graduated from public high school and I did all the things that I was supposed to do.
My dad was lackadaisical on the discipline front. I dropped out of everything at school.
I'm kinda secretive, and I can't even say secretive because of my son. He's the type, like, he doesn't let his friends know who his mom is or his stepdad. He doesn't like me going to his school. If he gets into trouble at school, he's, like, dying. He's very low-key with it. He's always been like that since he was born.
I didn't like playing with dolls; I didn't like getting dressed up. A lot of my friends and people I went to school with were into fashion and their clothes, so I lacked a bit of self-belief and confidence... I wasn't really comfortable.
I've always wanted to be an actress. At school and in college, I did some things. But then I married, and then I had children, and then there were the political years.
