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 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.
Drama school was the first place I learned that looks can affect your career. It was very horrible at the time. I had a lot of very bad experiences at drama school because of that, from the teachers and the students. In the end, I think it was good for me because it hardened me to the realities of the business early on.
I definitely was inspired by drama teachers in high school named Mr. Walsh and Ms. O'Neil, and both of them were very formative in helping me sort of understand theater. But I think my biggest inspiration is that I was a high school drama teacher in real life for four years in the Bronx.
I was always keen to get involved in the school drama productions and was a member of the school choir. I was lucky to have attended schools that took music and drama very seriously and the teachers were just brilliant.
I went to drama college in England - the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London. I was there for not quite two years, then I got Star Wars.
When I was maybe eight or nine years old, I first learned about the climate crisis in school. My teachers taught me about it and we saw films and pictures of plastic in the ocean and extreme weather events. Those pictures were just stuck in my head; I thought, there is no point in anything.
I got into politics when I was eight years old. Six years now. And I got involved because I started listening to talk radio. It goes back to one event. The Democrats filibustered something in the Senate when I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was on and I didn't honestly care when I was eight years old. I cared about the history and the Senate rules.
I've been eight years with this beautiful little thing and I've got a partner for him now. After eight years of trying to unify the titles, it's going to be pretty hard to give this up.
I'd been gearing up to working in theatre since coming out of drama school, but it was an exciting time for TV drama - it was the birth of Channel 4, and Brookside was very cutting-edge at the time.
I definitely felt by the time I got to grad school - which was a great experience - I was like, 'What's the difference between the teachers and the students? Why are the teachers teachers if they want to be acting?' It didn't make sense to me anymore. It's not like you learn how to set a broken bone and you get the stamp of approval.
It's cool cause my sister is older than me and we went to the same high school, so by the time I got to high school, I got the lowdown on all the teachers and everything.
In 1940 my mum took a job as under-matron at her old school, which had been evacuated from Eastbourne to Windermere; I got a bursary and spent eight years as a boarder. It was a smashing education; I regret being at a single-sex school, but I had a brother, so knew what guys were.
You look at a clock and it tells you it's eight o'clock, you know the number of hours that has been before eight; you know the number of hours you've got after eight. You can now measure your time to see if you can get done a number of things you've got to get done. History serves the same purpose.
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 ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years.