Well, I was going to school in Germany. And in my free time I was dancing.
All those days of waiting on tables until I could get a role on Broadway, all that time going to school taking lessons, and all those years of being a nobody following a dream-and now here it is.
At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to school, but you can't tell who the best people are. That worries the hell out of me.
I've always been singing all my life, but I started playing guitar when I was 19, and that was my final year in university, in law school. I think that happened when I started making a lot of friends who were in the independent music scene.
I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.
When there was a fight in school, because I was the tall one, the teachers would say, 'I know you were there. I could see you.'
I prefer home school because you learn more by yourself than when you're around other people because you get distracted.
I think it's unreasonable to expect kids at 17 to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. And actually, I guess I had a desire to be an artist, and I did enroll in art school out of high school.
I think I was on this very straightforward escalator - grammar school, high school, college, get a job on Wall Street, kind of everything leads to the next thing. But at what point do you get to step back and say, 'I'd like to take a broader view of my time on this planet?'
Because I came from a small town outside Glasgow, nobody from my school had ever gone into the acting profession. It was just something you didn't do. You joined the bank or became a teacher or whatever you did.
I enjoyed school - although I ran away on the first day. I'd reminded the teacher that it was nearly time for 'Watch With Mother' on TV.
You know, my children go to a local, local catholic school just down the road.
A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.
I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition.
Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.
See, at a certain point it becomes cool to be boy crazy. That happens in sixth grade, and it gives you so much social status, particularly in an all-girls school, if you can go up and talk to boys.
I had been singing all my life, but I started acting in high school.
There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.
I was in school studying International Studies and Sociology. I was really into what was going on in school. I was affected by the ideas and engaged as a student, but not disciplined or motivated enough to do the work. That was a fear of mine for a while, that nothing was motivating.
I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.'
My parent's divorce and hard times at school, all those things combined to mold me, to make me grow up quicker. And it gave me the drive to pursue my dreams that I wouldn't necessarily have had otherwise.
I remember playing a high school basketball game where I didn't eat anything for breakfast. I ate, you know, like a PB and J and some chips for lunch and nothing before the game. I didn't make it through the first quarter. I wish I hadn't have learned that way, but it did leave a lasting impression.
I never really was that passionate about playing sports. But when I was at this Mt. Herman school, I did have the ability to throw the frisbee. So when this sport evolved, it was fun because I was good at it.
We have a lot of American TV in Australia. I grew up watching 'Seinfeld,' 'The Simpsons' and those prime time TV shows over the years that feature grown-ups and high school kids. We had a saturation of American voices.
I was going to middle school in Berkley, and I did not fit in at all. Like a lot of kids, I found theater to be a good place for me.
While I was trying to save money to go to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia I ended up getting all of this experience which meant that by the time I had enough money in the bank to go to school I didn't really need to go to school anymore.
You still remember your SAT scores. And everybody else does too. Everybody's forgotten everything about themselves, everything else about high school. They remember their SAT scores.
I went to Holland Christian High School in Holland, Michigan, and to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Prior to high school, I played a lot of neighborhood football.
I've run a lot of miles over the years, some fast and some not so fast. I've won some big races and I've had some big disappointments, but I enjoy the freedom of running and the challenge of training and competition as much now as when I first started back in high school.
I wanted to perform well for my mom and dad, because in high school, I didn't have a job. My brothers, they worked at Pizza Hut or places like that, but sports, that was my way of giving back.
When I left drama school, my fear was that I'd get pigeon holed into comic acting and I did so much to counter it that I got stuck in the opposite.
I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
I hated high school. Ugh. I couldn't wait until it was over so I could sleep in. In college, I made sure all my classes were in the afternoon. I hated getting up in the morning.
Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.
I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.
