I wanted to be a dancer from when I was about nine or something like that and started ballet. I used to really like it and got into it and did it full time for a couple of years. I did a lot of ballet but I traded that in for acting when I was about 15.
I went to my mum at about seven or eight and said I want to start acting, but the week before, I had said I wanted to do ballet. She said if I took acting classes for a full year, she would look further into it, and that's how it started.
Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.
Yeah I took the spot she gone POOF
When I was a kid, I always had my hair in two plaits. But for dancing, I had to have it in a bun because I did ballet.
If you're small and can speak clearly and you're a cute kid, that's the craft, really. The whole child actor thing can be dangerous sometimes. Other kids were taking piano lessons; I did ballet and acting.
Baseball player. Yeah, that was my dream before acting, or alongside acting.
Oh yeah people recognize me, but the craziest thing? I mean I've had the normal autographs ... but I had to sign a baby's carriage once. I thought that was weird, so yeah, I guess that's the craziest thing.
Oh yeah people recognize me, but the craziest thing? I mean I've had the normal autographs... but I had to sign a baby's carriage once. I thought that was weird, so yeah, I guess that's the craziest thing.
I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new.
But I have fun with the fright, work with it. You have to - that's your timing, that beat of excitement. And when I go on stage, it's just like taking a step into heaven. Poof, you know? Poof - and there I am.
I knew I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but what kind, I wasn't sure. My two dream companies had been New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater.
Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I'm physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don't think I'd look graceful at all on screen.
I joined the Royal Ballet School when I was 13. Before then, I'd done ballet twice a week after school. The rest of my class had started aged 11, so I'd missed two years and was really far behind.
The first acting I ever did was an Italian commercial. Once I did that, I said, 'this acting thing is awesome.'
I did ballet from the age of five, but what I loved was my gymnastics. I kept the ballet going because of the gymnastics, then found I was going to be too tall.