I grew up in East Germany, so we had to learn Russian in school... everybody hated it. I never thought it would come in handy... And being an actor, I've been able to use it quite a bit.
Foreign languages was the only thing that interested me when I was at school, so playing in another language... it is quite demanding because if it is not your mother tongue, you are missing some connotations and some emotional depth of certain thing...
It's important to appreciate the impact of knowledge in our lives, and that of our parents in getting us educated. However in today's world, if someone have not been to school, that means he must have been educated.
I took the LSAT. My score was decent. I had a plan that if my score was really well, then I might of just went to Yale or Harvard... But it was just mediocre. I can get into law school.
One day, when we were coming back from school, we saw this big cloud of smoke coming up, and all these fire-trucks in the yard. The garage was burning down. I was 14, and we'd lost everything.
But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.
When I finished grad school, I sort of fell into journalism. Someone mentioned that there was an entry-level job at the Reuters News Agency. I applied, and, to my amazement, I got the job.
Once I started first grade, I started going to Emmanuel Baptist Church regularly. I went to Sunday school. We had Bible readings and things like that.
I try to leave a light footprint. I'm involved with Global Green, which aims to educate people about sustainable building and the greening of schools. I try to be aware about the consumption of unnecessary things in a consumptive culture.
During one or two summers, as well as part-time during the school year, I worked for a small Canadian company which developed electrical instruments for military planes.
I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'
I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school.
I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.
It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.
This is my saddest story: In grade school, they would have us open our Valentine's cards and read them out loud. I always sent cards to myself because nobody else did.
Speaking as someone who didn't go through the U.K. school system, with all the culinary baggage that entails, I am inordinately fond of custard in any shape or form.
In high school, I tried very hard to make everybody like me, which resulted in me being extremely unhappy and in a lot of pain. Therefore, the lesson I got from that was that I can't make everybody happy.
My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the century. He was killed in the line of duty. My father, who was 16, was the oldest son, so he had to quit school and go to work to support his mother.
I unloaded planes for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky. It only was bad because it was called 'Earn to Learn,' where you pay for your tuition for college, but you have to work graveyard shift - midnight to eight A.M. - and then go to school at nine or 10 ...
When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.
My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.
