I was your typical struggling actress. I went to every audition, took a million acting, dancing and singing lessons and spent years wondering where my next meal was coming from.
When I was young, I was always telling my parents and telling everybody that I was going to be a singer and an actress when I grew up. I took classes. I was in dance lessons. I took singing lessons. I was in the plays. I took acting lessons. I did different things that continued to keep me ready for this opportunity and ready for all the things that are happening now.
I was in ballet classes, I took singing lessons, I started taking acting classes as a hobby. When I was younger, I had my mind set on dancing or singing.
You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.
I took theatre and stuff in college, then I took a bunch of different acting classes here in L.A. Sometimes when I have a hard audition, I'll call my acting coach and he'll come help me. I actually get more nervous in acting class than I do at an actual audition. It's actually a really great way to get over your nerves.
I'm the youngest of four, and they were all very into sports. I was the first one to express an interest in the arts. I took piano lessons and singing lessons, acting lessons. So it was all new to them, but my parents were great.
I've always loved music. I wasn't one of those "composing since I was five" kids, but I was definitely involved with music since I was that age - singing in musicals and taking lessons. Lots of lessons! Singing, dancing, acting, drums set. My mom pretty much had a full-time job carting me all over town six days a week.
I've been working as an actress and sort of struggling along for ten years, so I've been on a million auditions for a million things I haven't booked.
I took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but even before that, you're singing in the classroom and wherever. Gosh, children are always singing. But I took music lessons, some choir and things like that at school. I learned how to play the guitar when I was about 13... ancient history.
I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it; so was my brother.
35 million people in the U.S. are hungry or don't know where their next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children. If another country were doing this to our children, we'd be at war.
I think it took us nine years to get one million subscribers to AOL, and then in the next nine years we went from one million to 35 million.
My parents spent 16 years hauling my butt to L.A. for audition after audition. I remember always hoping I could help take care of them because they took such good care of me.
When I was younger, my mother tried to get me an agent because I was always singing and dancing, but whenever she took me to an audition, I would just shut down.
The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.
I took lessons since I was little; I used to pay for my own singing lessons and take myself. Just take the bus when I was a kid and go. But I'd been writing music for years, since the smallest age.
Around 7 years old, we girls took dancing lessons, joined the Brownies, the Girl Scouts, the 4H Club.