It was only when I went to acting school that I was like, "You are absolutely such a pigheaded freak show that you thought you, at the age of 12 or 13, could have a better understanding of Stanislavski. Why did you think that you didn't need to go to school?" It was quite funny. But, I was certainly inspired.
I started quite late. I only discovered that I could write a song when I was, like, 17... some musicians, they're starting out, writing songs when they're, like, 12, 13. I never thought I would go into songwriting when I was that young.
I did a lot of serious plays, and I did the Oxford Review as well, which is supposed to be funny, but I'm not sure how funny we were when we did it. Then, when I finished my course, it was only then that I decided to go to drama school and try and do acting because I was enjoying it so much and so on.
At 12, I was, like, 6-2. At 13, I was, like, 6-5 or 6-6. I had always stuck out as a bit of a freak, so athletics gave me a chance to make friends and, I guess, find my 'cool' vibe, if there's such a thing when you're in high school.
I could have gone to a bigger school. I use it as motivation going to a school that loved me. I wanted to put them on the map and show everyone that you don't need to go to a top school to make it in the NBA.
Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me.
I enjoyed school until the age of 13 - I loved my teachers, my friends. Then, suddenly, you get thrown into a boys' school, and the ecosystem changed, and I wasn't sure where I fitted in. I was still always the clown, but I wasn't inspired, I guess.
I was a completely normal kid, the school nerd. In Year 8 and 9 I got picked on. I was a freak- no one understood me. I was the kid who wanted to be abducted by ET. Then all the losers left in Year 10. But I was quite good at school, and very artistic. In Year 11 it turned around. I became one of the coolest kids in school. I was in school musicals- the kid who could sing. It was bizzare. I loved school. It's an amazing little world. The rules inside the school are different from the outside world.
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?
That's why I kept going with my school - I wasn't talented. That's what's the difficulty - you want to define key talents when they are 12, 13 or 14? When I was that age I was nowhere near. People had given up on me.
And then, one acting class turned into two, turned into four, and then turned into, "I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. But, I don't have a background in acting. I never acted in college, or did anything like that. How can I go about doing this?" That meant going to grad school and getting some training, and I did. I literally walked down the path. It was real fortuitous for me to walk by that school, that one morning.
I went to Catholic high school, so my being in this [the craft] is not going to make my grandmother very happy. It's funny, because I was the only one who is Catholic in it. You have this thing in mass where you have to genuflect before you go into the pew, so I said you have to do this [for a scene] and they said why, and I said because you have to; I don't know why, it's a rule. Or like instinct. It's funny they set in a Catholic school. I went to St. Ignatius College Prep - "Where Modesty is our Policy."
I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.
I did drama at school, as a kid, but I ain't been to, like, acting school or anything. I was in a couple of school plays.
Sometimes when I'm not working, I go and teach at an acting school, and quite selfishly, that makes me feel more inspired to do things myself.
I did my first professional play at 11, and there was really nothing else I ever dreamed of doing. I felt so fortunate that I knew at the age of like, 12, like this is all I want to do for the rest of my life; that's the only play. There's no backup plan. My mom wanted me to go to school and have a backup plan. I'm like 'No, this is the only plan.'
I once read somewhere that Sean Connery left school at the age of 13 and later went on to read Proust and Finnegans Wake and I keep expecting to meet an enthusiastic school leaver on the train, the type of person who only ever reads something because it is marvellous (and so hated school). Unfortunately the enthusiastic school leavers are all minding their own business.