I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
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.
When I left school - or, rather, when I was expelled from school for hitting a kid who had disrespected a teacher - I had nothing, with nowhere to go. Where I'm from, it really means that. Now my family are millionaires. I never dreamed this would be possible.
I just started as a part of the public school music program. I took lessons at the school every Friday and was a part of the school band. I was just a normal kid taking instrumental lessons at school, nothing special.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade and had gone to a special school for it and then left the school. I'd learned to read and write, but it was still a real struggle for me, as it is to this day.
I went to school at this log school house. A white woman was my teacher, I do not remember her name. My father had to pay her one dollar a month for me. Us kids that went to school did not have desks, we used slates and set on the hued down logs for seats.
I always grew up around acting. I did commercials as a kid and all that kind of stuff and my oldest brother did theatre in High School. It's funny, when I was 15 I had a friend of mine who dragged me away to a camp at Boston University. It was the first time truthfully that acting didn't feel presentational; it felt very personal. I didn't just feel like I was singing and dancing for my friends in High School. It felt like I was doing a scene and all of a sudden I started to feeling something - I started to feel emotional.
But even a kid, directing was something that I did. I made short films in school. I feel like I've been in the best film school in the world.
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.
There was certainly nothing really sexual about my youth growing up, simply because the fact remains if you're the fat kid in a school and I was the only fat black kid in the school - in fact, I was the only black kid in the school - but if you are kind of ostracized on many different levels in your school the last thing you're worried about is sex.
I hated school. After 15, you went off to college if you were good enough. It didn't appeal to me so I left school. I did what everybody did - get a job.
I did one year of school and I was doing correspondence school, which was actually another happy accident. Correspondence school is basically home school, but you teach yourself instead of your parents teaching you. I found that to be one of the most important things in my life is that I learned how to teach myself things. I feel like that's something that schools should actually teach.
I educated myself, and it made me feel good. I went to museums. I read books. I did all the things, pretty much, that you would do in school. I would never want my kids to leave school, though, I'm really for education.
School was a big source of anxiety for me. I hated school. I have social anxiety, and it developed when I was a kid. I had trouble going to birthday parties. It was always there. I begged my mom to let me be home-schooled at one point for a semester because I was so miserable at school.
I left drama school to do 'The Book Thief' - it was a real trip going straight from school kind of right into it, but I feel like the momentum of being in school put me in a good mindset as far as going into it as a learning experience.
I was very neurotic as a kid, but I also used to pray to God as a young kid in school. It was a form of meditation to slow my head down and not make me feel nervous.