It's dangerous to be a child star, but it's dangerous to be a child in the ghetto, or to be a child at school being bullied.
All four of my grandparents were educators, my mom was a school nurse, and I went through the public school system.
I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.
During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me.
As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren't wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia.
In early high school years, I was pretty chubby, and I spent a lot of time on my computer, before it was cool to have a computer - because there was a time that was true. So that's where I developed my personality.
I've always been a creative speller and never achieved good grades in school. I graduated from high school but didn't have the opportunity to attend college, so I did what young women my age did at the time - I married.
I liked Shakespeare in high school, but in university I spent a semester studying in London, and it was sort of in the middle of me falling deeply in love with literature, and I took a Shakespeare course with a professor who couldn't imagine anything more important than Shakespeare.
When I was in school I read a lot of comic books and pretend I was in them and kids would tease me and call me names. But now I do the same things and people say that I'm artistic and cool and I'm doing the exact same thing I did in high school.
I went to high school in Minnesota.
I do believe that when your child does poorly on a test, your first step should not necessarily be to attack the teacher or the school's curriculum. It should be to look at the idea that, maybe, the child didn't work hard enough.
By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.
I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.
My mom always told me to follow my bliss. And I remember specifically with my father, when I was out of school and not knowing how I'd get a job or make money - should I take some classes? What do I do? He said as long as I was working - to enrich myself in some way - that I was on the right path.
My younger sister retired a few years ago after a 30-year career teaching history and social studies at an inner-city high school.
I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.
I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, where Bonnie and Clyde were from, so when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to drive me past the Barrow Filling Station. At my elementary school, there was a barn outside that they used to say was a Bonnie and Clyde hangout.
I am ambidextrous. I write with my right hand but played basketball in high school with my left.
When my daughter Dixie gets out of school, I take her to ballet, soccer, or karate. Or if it's a free afternoon, we might bake together. I love our time together. There is nothing more important in my life than making her happy.
I wasn't that good at science, and I gave up on math long before I should have. I like to think if I were in school today that would be different.
I used to do design before I was actually rapping. I went to art and design high school.
No matter how much you like your local school teacher, he or she is a government agent.
When I was 13, I auditioned for the theater school, and I was there for four years. In the meantime, I did my first three movies, all in Cuba.
If events had taken a different course, I could have been one of those children going to a school without the sorts of opportunities that I've subsequently had.
I got my agents right out of school, and I booked my first commercial right away. It was always enough to not quit and do something else.
I went to private school my whole life. Growing up in Los Angeles, you're surrounded by not just Connecticut privilege but, like, your-dad's-a-movie-star privilege.
I was planning to go into law or politics. I was well known for my public speaking. I went to an all-girl boarding school with uniforms. It was very posh for someone like me who came from a world where my parents showed beagles and sold dog products out of a yellow caravan.
I never liked going to school and would sham and play football. I played in the centre forward position. If ever given a choice, I would love to represent Barcelona.
When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.
I'm more old school: I want to be like Keith Richards on stage. It's not interesting to see straight-from-runway clothes slapped on an artist. It's more interesting when you see people who have their own style.
Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?
I was so naive in radio technique that I knew nothing about timing. I would write pages on Honus Wagner and then get only half through by the time the show ended. I eventually learned, but there was nobody there to school me.
I've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.
A lot of stuff I wear I've had since high school.
I went to drama school at New York University.
My dad died of a heart attack when I was 15. I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. I went through a divorce - those not-so-great things are all a part of me, and they give me a place to go when I cover those stories on the news. I'm more empathetic, more relatable because of them.
