Throughout high school, I was fairly boring. I didn't do many rebellious things.
I never went to drama school.
So my son is very curious, which is fantastic. He loves school. So I don't have to encourage him too much, but I love to do it because I know it's meaningful and words are powerful.
For example, I was a White House intern the summer before I dropped out of law school. Everybody knew about it. I'd come home and go to church and everybody would say, 'Oh, my God. Demetri, you're working at the White House.'
My parents weren't around much, but I assumed everybody's family was the same. I didn't know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them.
I can never remember a time when I didn't want to be an actress, to be honest. And so, all through high school, I knew that I was gonna go to college in Los Angeles. I just didn't know where. And I knew that I was gonna try to get my theater degree.
I plowed fields with horses and worked as a hired hand in high school for 50 cents a day.
I went to the theater school at DePaul University in Chicago, the Goodman School.
There was quite a lot of lying around in fields at Stonar, a small independent girls' school in the country near Bath. It was a non-selective school and the right environment for me: academically not particularly pushy.
When I was in high school in England, I wasn't sure that you could have a career in fashion. In those days, there were very few fashion magazines. I didn't realize there was a school where you could go and learn how to make clothes and design. I thought you just had to be discovered somewhere, like a film.
The chances of a child coming through as I did... the world is too hard. On the other hand, I would always encourage children of mine if they wanted to be in school plays and dance and sing. But I wouldn't put them to work.
I was growing up in the New Wave period, but that wasn't allowed in school. I remember moments when they wouldn't let four people dressed in black stand together on the playground.
At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.
There would be times when I got so much work that I didn't have time to write. School interfered with writing more than writing with school.
I went to school for clothing and textiles and thought this is what I was going to do. Then I started working in costumes and literally said, 'I don't know if I can take the actors.'
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'
I started to wear the sunglasses all the time at school, hiding behind them... I'd walk down the hallways, practically hugging the wall, dragging my head against it like I was crazy.
I want my kids to be in an environment where they can talk about values in a way that you can't always do in a public school setting.
My father passed away when I was very young, so I was head of household for a very long time. Whether it came to cooking food or having to braid hair to get kids out of the door for school, I've been one that has - with the help of my mother - has been a father figure for a lot of young ladies.
Having started in theatre, for a long time I wanted to be a classical actress. But I've always loved making people laugh - at school, I was quite mischievous, and bit by bit, I found myself working more and more in comedy.
From the age of four, I loved ballet and tap. I was in the school band, the choir, and all my school plays.
At school, I felt out of place. I was bullied. I would think, 'These kids don't like me, they don't accept me,' but I felt like in the entertainment industry, I would fit in.
When I got out of high school, I thought, I'll take a year or two off and play the clubs, get this out of my system, and then go to med school.
I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.
I never went to fashion school. I didn't know what a designer was. I knew I had something, but I didn't know what it was. And it could just have easily been nothing.
I wasn't a great student. Just give me a school with no grades, and I'll be happy.
In high school, I was one of the cofounders of New Kids on the Block my freshman year in high school. But I also started studying theatre in high school my freshman year as well. So throughout high school, I was actually doing both.
One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.
I was always writing scripts, and I had made several shorts, before and after film school. But I worked a variety of temp positions over the years.
Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.
I'd say I've gone to grad school for comedy being on 'Community.'
I dressed like Leslie Caron as a teenager: soft school pleats, Peter Pan collars.
I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.
I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.
I believe education should be a right for every child, but tragically in many parts of world it is a privilege for certain children whose parents have money. There are 72 million children in the world who don't go to school and many of them are in Africa.
