I moved to New York for school right after I turned 18, but I started getting into trouble - so I went home to L.A. to regroup.
My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?
I always performed as a kid to make my family laugh and was more concerned with making kids at school laugh than I was about the lessons.
I was bullied in school, but thankfully, I was surrounded by amazing family that love me and kept my head high and didn't allow me to fall into depression because of it.
An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.
I was really bored, pretty antisocial, and not much of a joiner, and people thought that was a problem. I hated high school. In a way, it was good... I think, for a writer, it's good to be comfortable with being on the outside.
Delaware State began as a school bent on service - teaching education, social services and nursing.
Instilling a sense of self-discipline and focus when the kids are younger makes it so much easier by the time they get into high school.
I hope I give girls an opportunity to realize that they can swim and go to school at the same time. It's not to be given up once they get out of high school. They can continue doing it for the rest of their lives.
I've carried my chip with me my entire career. I've had to fight and claw for every position I've had. I sat on the bench as a junior in high school, I had to compete my senior year in high school to get the job. I competed again at Vanderbilt before having success.
When I was in school, my first acknowledgement of 'Roots' was Kunta Kinte.
I tried snowboarding at 14, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I snowboarded every day off I had, every weekend I had off of school, every holiday we had off from school, and it became a huge part of my life, not just what I love to do, but really just kind of who I was.
I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity.
I got my Equity Card with my Broadway debut when I did 'Rent.' I was in high school, and I came to New York to do that show.
I've been training as an actor for six years. Nobody goes to acting school for six years. I mean, the college course is only four years! I absolutely trained.
I told her it was a bigger than life musical, that all the actors were going to be about the same age, late twenties into thirties. It would be a style; a kind of surreal high school.
My education at Baron Byng High School was excellent, with dedicated masters (boys and girls were separate).
After that I jumped, especially being in art school, to the illustrators.
I remember joining a boarding school in the sixth grade. I was lazy, complacent, and fat. Suddenly, I realised that I had to fend for myself. That's when I discovered this drive within myself. For the first time, I ranked first in class, which was a miracle in itself. However, it didn't matter to my family.
Any time you stick your neck out in high school, there's someone right there to chop your head off.
At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.
My mother, who was professional schoolteacher, was particularly concerned about our formal education and even went so far as to start a private school together with some other parents so that our intellectual needs would be met.
As for the symphonic activities... when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, I became exposed to a lot more musical forms, elements, opportunities, and I fell in love with strings and their uses.
When I was in film school, I was learning more theory than practice.
I grew up listening to country music with my dad on the way to school.
I actually didn't get to go to my prom. I left high school when I was 16 to join 'NSYNC. I felt that was something I always missed out on, and all my friends got to go and would tell me about it.
People say, 'I know you, don't I?' And they expect me to say I know them from their daughter's school or something - they can't place me. And I love that. Long may it last.
It wasn't a secret that I was gay. I'd come out to my parents during my junior year of high school, on the day that I also wrecked the family car.
When I'm home, I've got the kind of time that other dads who live there full time don't have. I can go and have lunch with my kids at school and that sort of thing.
The stage was our school, our home, our life.
I did a lot of my school on set. Some years I went to a private school for a couple of hours, and then I'd always finish up with a tutor. I couldn't do full days, but I tried to maintain my friendships and some normalcy while doing a show.
Teachers need time to engage with colleagues - whether shadowing, mentoring, co-teaching or conferring. They need a voice in school decisions and to be trusted as professionals.
I was always the guy getting kicked out of my classes at school for having an attitude problem.
Even if there was an opportunity to school yourself in different characters - characters that have distinct personalities which may be totally different from yours, you have got to completely divorce your own personality to be able to go over to the other personality.
I have my name Cory on my left arm, and I have my mom's name on my right with a cross. She passed away while I was still in high school, so I got that on my right arm.
When I get into trouble at school I'd like to take an invisibility cloak, drape it over me and sneak out the door. Or I'd like to have a 3 headed-dog because then no one would argue with me.
