Though I was into modeling and extracurricular activities in my school days at C.G. High School in Mumbai, I never thought of making it big someday in a film-industry.
My mother always told me that came first. I started modeling in 11th grade and it was something that I did after school and on the weekends. School is so important and modeling should be treated as an extracurricular activity as opposed to a career until you graduate high school.
In high school, I was very active in extracurricular activities such as art, theatre, and choir. I also wrote for the school newspaper, but not regularly, because I never liked writing non-fiction very much.
I was good at school but I thought I sucked at everything else. I was socially scared of making relationships. High school was a big fail as the social experiment that it is.
I never went to a modeling school, and I don't suggest to anybody that they go to a modeling school... In fashion, one day you're in, the next you're out.
I went to school every day, like everyone else, and I played baseball for my high school team. I was a part of a lot of different activities outside of school.
I went to school here at the University of San Carlos for my primary and high school. I was valedictorian in grade school, and I was number one in high school, and because of that, I received free tuition in school. I thank the school for that.
I never went to a modeling school, and I don't suggest to anybody that they go to a modeling school.
When I was in high school in England, I wasn't sure that you could have a career in fashion. In those days, there were very few fashion magazines. I didn't realize there was a school where you could go and learn how to make clothes and design. I thought you just had to be discovered somewhere, like a film.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
I thought about going to NYU film school - that was this ideal to me. But I didn't make any kind of grades in high school.
When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater.
In school, I was good in academics and extracurricular activities. I even topped the state in French in my Std 12 exams.
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
I started modeling when I was about 2 or 3 years old; I started with Baby Guess, and I did Guess Kids, and that was the extent of my modeling career as a kid. I took all of my elementary, middle and high school years off to focus on school and sports.
I don't know if one's more typecasting than the other, or what I am more like. But I know that the high school I went to was a private school. It was prep school. It was a boarding school. So we didn't have a shop class. We didn't have Saturday detention. We went to school on Saturday. We did have Sunday study, which you very rarely get, because then you have 13 straight days of school. Who wants that?
I always knew I'd go back to school. Modeling was a means to an end, making money for graduate school.