I think if I had come out of drama school and been an instant Hollywood superstar, I would be taking long, leisurely holidays.
We lived on a farm outside a town of about 900 people. My father was the principal of the elementary school. It was a typical Southern town - there are a lot of churches, and it's dry.
My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.
(I should mention I attended a Christian elementary school where “my dad’s hermeneutic can beat up your dad’s hermeneutic” served as legit schoolyard banter.)
Unexamined wallpaper is classroom practices and institutional policies that are so entrenched in school culture or a teacher's paradigm that their ability to affect student learning is never probed.
I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.
I wasn't being bullied at school at this point. I had a group of friends, and I was isolated because I wasn't communicating with my parents. I wasn't telling them what I was going through.
Many psychopaths describe the traditional treatment programmes as finishing schools where they hone their skills. Where they find out that there are lots of techniques they had not thought about before.
With 'Brick,' the style with language and the way it was shot was to create a world obviously elevated from the very first frame above a typical high school.
There's a way you have to play the quarterback position in the NFL. Maybe I'm a little bit old school, but I think you have to play the game in the pocket with consistency.
I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there.
But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.
I'm a graduate of Princeton, and I just want to say you don't have to go to an Ivy League school to be on the Supreme Court.
I actually then went on to direct an after-school special where one of the characters was deaf. They hired me without even knowing I had any connection to the community.
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
When I went to college, it didn't even occur to me that I should be in a sorority at all. I went to school in New York City, where you don't need to be in a sorority to go to a party!
I was in a play in elementary school and had to jump up and run away. I was nervous and tripped and fell down and everyone laughed. Their laughter made me relax, so I pretended it was part of the show.
My point is that, over the years, I've taught five thousand people acting and lately I have a lot of energy on these kids, having the same break I had as a high school girl.
For me, growing up and going to school and not seeing any anti-bullying posters and not hearing people talk about bullying was very desolate.
You know all those models who say, 'I was so tall and lanky and everyone picked on me at school' - I was not that girl. I hear that and I'm like, 'Oh, you poor thing!'
I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school. But it almost doesn't matter to a certain segment of the populace.
