Like so many other kids with special needs, I have been bullied. Kids in elementary school made me eat sand, and those same boys would walk behind me, teasing me. Finally I had enough, and I told them to grow up.
Both the velodrome and the Commonwealth swimming pool are open to the public and are frequently used by local schools and the local community. Over the last six years young people have been inspired to take up swimming and cycling more seriously; som...
Gen Y is really quite distinct from Gen X; it's really self-involved and very narcissistic - their cameras are filled with pictures of themselves; Facebook, it's about me. It's a generation that's been pampered by their parents and their schools, giv...
When I was in high school, I liked to pretend that I was a Russian foreign exchange student. I would do things like go into a pizza restaurant and tell them I'd never had pizza before, and they'd bring me into the kitchen and show me how to make an A...
Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern i...
I think I veered towards filmmaking because there's more of a sense of control in it. You're not waiting to be picked. That said, in film school I acted in probably 6,000 student films because no other filmmakers knew anyone who wanted to act. It was...
I grew up in England, went to a nice public school, then didn't want to go to university, so I thought I would wander around. I did a season skiing, a bit of sailing, typical spoilt brat stuff. I ended up in the Caribbean. I was having a blast.
In 2009, I traveled to South Sudan with my organization PSI. While there, I visited a local school and met with a group of children who had formed a water club. The group learned about how to treat their drinking water and use proper hygiene practice...
I remember when I was in high school I didn't have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because...
One of my graduate school professors, to whom I started sending poems when I started writing again after a 10-year hiatus, suggested I prepare a book manuscript which he could send to publishers for me.
I remember thinking that people were crazy for reading the same book more than once, but I now have a new-found appreciation for the re-discovery of literature. The lessons we learned from books in the school curriculum are reinvented and updated whe...
I'm a little top heavy, so I have to pay attention to that area. I think it was from my years of swimming in school when I was a kid and it just overdeveloped my upper body. In fact, when I started modeling, my back was so developed, I could not fit ...
I wore makeup when I was at school, and I wore makeup when glam started. I started wearing it again when punk started. I've always been drawn to wearing it. It's partly ritualistic, partly theatrical and partly just because I think I look better with...
Obviously we had to study Shakespeare at school, but to be honest, I was not a fan. I found the language very difficult, and I didn't enjoy watching it or studying it. I auditioned five times for the Royal Shakespeare Company early on in my career, a...
My first job was playing 'Nurse 2' in a film by Ben Elton called 'Maybe Baby,' and the first actors I worked with professionally were Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. I was totally star-struck. I got that job on my final day of drama school, so it w...
I never really thought of myself as a physical comedian. But when I was a kid, I used to, you know, pretend to trip over things to make girls laugh in school and stuff like that. So I kind of learned how to fall without hurting yourself.
During the week it isn't always easy to sit down together and I am usually in a rush to get everyone off to school. A bowl of cereal and milk with fruit is perfect because it's quick and easy. I like to mix it up on the weekends when we can all relax...
I felt like any other American kid. I already worked at a steady job as an ice cream scooper, but I didn't feel less in any way than my more affluent friends from school.
When I was in high school in Los Angeles, my mother, who was a speech therapist, agreed to stay over the weekend with one of her clients and his little sister while the parents went away on vacation. She brought me along.
In high school, theater was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't see that I was going to set it aside for so many years and take a right turn into television. Of course, wanting to do theater is something you hear a lot from actors. I think I've been em...
When I was going to school, I just wanted to be like everybody else. I would pull at my hair to try and get it to lie straight. America was where I would consume and absorb black culture, buy Ultra Sheen and watch 'Soul Train,' but I still had that w...
