I love to sing. I never had any formal training. My mother is a singer, and I picked up listening to her.
As an actress, I never went to film school, and I think if I had gone to film school, I would have started with a great advantage. If you have a strong intent to do anything in life, you can do it, but it always helps to have formal training.
There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think. If you're an actor in England, that's just the way to get into it but I've been so incredibly lucky in that I was brought up in to it. I still might go to drama school, if I wanted to do theater work, definitely. It's a completely different type of training.
About a year after leaving drama school or a year and a half - and I was working solidly ever since leaving drama school - I picked up 'Game of Thrones.'
I never went to drama school, but I did learn a couple of things along the way.
I never went to drama school, but I was really lucky in that both my junior school and secondary school had brilliant drama departments.
Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along.
Growing up on Mad Men with so many incredible actors and then going on to other things with amazing people, I never had any formal acting training, but they are all acting schools, basically. Just watching and learning from the best is insane. It's like having an internship and watching all these amazing people doing their work. You just soak it up like a sponge, hopefully.
I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing.
When my record company rejected 'Full Moon Fever', I was hurt so bad. I was pretty far along in my career at that point. I'd never had anything rejected; I'd never really even had a comment. So when that happened, it was really just a board to the forehead. But then, finally, I picked myself up.
When I was 15, I came downstairs one morning, picked up mother's newspaper and, oh, what a shock! The Titanic had gone. The 'unsinkable' ship - but it had gone down so simple.
I picked up business skills along the way, but there are things you learn at school like speaking the language of business so you can speak with CEOs.
Other people do better going on to grad school and others yet are naturally inclined and do just fine without any formal training at all. Everyone is different. The only things I think are imperative are focus, determination and hard work.
I was incredibly nervous about doing a period drama. I thought that to play period, you had to be English-looking and blonde and very well spoken, and have gone to drama school.
Starting out as a junior varsity coach in high school you pick up things along the way and put them all together. Something has gotta come out of it. It's basically stuff I picked up from other people.
I went to an arts school as a kid. We had to take dance every other day, along with drama, music and visual arts. However, wearing black tights was something I dreaded... and still have nightmares about it to this day. I think I was a pretty good dancer. I suppose that training helped me land parts in musicals... or has just given me nightmares!