I made a very concerted decision to go to drama school in the United States. But I did have the opportunity to go to Britain's Central School of Speech and Drama, and my dad and I had a few tense words about that. He wanted me to go to British drama school.
I went to NYU drama school, so I was a very serious actress. I used to do monologues with a Southern accent, and I was really into drama and drama school. And then, in my last year of drama school, I did a comedy show, and the show became a big hit on campus.
My fear of drama school is that the natural extraordinary but eccentric talent sometimes can't find its place in a drama school. And often that's the greatest talent. And it very much depends on the drama school and how it's run and the teachers. It's a different thing here in America as well because so many of your great actors go to class, which is sort of we don't do in England.
I didn't act professionally before going to drama school. I don't know if I had the confidence. I didn't think I'd get in when I first auditioned for drama school, and then I did.
I'd always wanted to go to drama school. My life plan was to get into drama school and become an actor, but it took me three years.
I always loved drama at school. We had a great drama teacher at my secondary school, and she made drama feel cool. She inspired me, and then I did the National Youth Theatre in London.
I found myself at Cambridge, loved my course, and met these amazing people who got me heavily involved. I presumed I would have to go to drama school, but I did a play with my uni friends, who were doing lots of pub theatre in London, and through that met my agent. She said 'Don't go to drama school. I'll get you a job' and two weeks later she did.
I did a lot of stock before I even went to drama school. I sort of went in the back door of drama school and I had joined in a stock company to get my experience.
I did all sorts of jobs after drama school - working in a bar, as a teaching assistant. I probably learned as much from them as I did at drama school.
Drama is hate. Drama is pushing your pain onto others. Drama is destruction. Some take pleasure in creating drama while others make excuses to stay stuck in drama. I choose not to step into a web of drama that I can't get out of.
I always wanted to have a family - that was one of my big wishes. And in school, I'd taken drama, and I'd always wanted to act. I did go to drama school in New York, Los Angeles and London, and I did small parts here and there, but I never really had the time. Modeling was always paying more.
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.
I realized that the actors that I liked and admired all went to drama school and got an agent that way. So I started when I was about 16 in drama school, and then I knew I had to wait until I was 18 so I could go on auditions, and I tried to get into one of the ones that I liked and then go from there.
I never went to drama school, but I was really lucky in that both my junior school and secondary school had brilliant drama departments.
I stayed a year in the sixth form and there was talk of Cambridge, but I wanted to go to drama school. At 17 and three months I went to the Old Vic School in London. This most remarkable and brilliant drama school lasted only six years because the Old Vic Theatre hadn't the money to go on funding it.
I started studying theater in school, and then I got into drama school at, like, 19, and it was a national drama school in Montreal, and so it was just you and nine other students for three years, and it was really intense.