A Quote by Sandra Dodd
The best function of the school in my head, as it turns out, is to remind me where not to dwell. I did my time in and around school, and learned things painstakingly and grudgingly that my children later learned while laughing and playing and singing.
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I remember one time when all the nuns in my Catholic grade school got around in a semicircle, me and Mom in the middle, and they said, 'Mrs. Farley, the children at school are laughing at Christopher, not with him.' I thought, 'Who cares? As long as they're laughing.'
I'd studied English literature and American history, but the English literature, which I thought was going to be helpful to me in an immediate way, was the opposite. So I had to un-think a lot of things and move out of my own head, and I learned a lot. It was like graduate school, but an un-graduate school or an un-school.
Everything I learned about women, I learned from the ages of 13-16. Every girl would talk to me about their problems, and none of them wanted to date me. So, I learned all of these things. So, when I finally got to the place where I could hit on girls, I just referenced back to all the things that I learned in high school.
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
I was always in and out of school. What I learned in high school is that female friendships are so much more important than worrying about having a boyfriend or looking good or things like that. I had such a good girlfriend growing up that we didn't need anything. We had such a creative world of our own imagination together. For me, if I have a child, I would say, "I hope you find a best friend that makes it so you don't really need much but each other." Learning about that type of friendship and trust is one of the best things I ever got out of school.
The first one I remember singing on stage was 'Somewhere Out There' from 'An American Tail.' I was around 7, and my choir teacher at school asked me if I would sing it. My parents told me that I needed to move around the stage, so for the entire time I just walked back and forth from side to side while I was singing - there's videotape of it.
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 took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but even before that, you're singing in the classroom and wherever. Gosh, children are always singing. But I took music lessons, some choir and things like that at school. I learned how to play the guitar when I was about 13... ancient history.
I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.
I learned a lot of good things in my school. I've audited a lot of other schools, and I guess after a while I got a little tired of the acting school atmosphere.
I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.
I had a hard time at school because I worked, so I was quite often out of school, which meant that I didn't make many friends. It can happen to child actors, because you're not in the school environment. And I did miss that school environment and being around people.
By training with Ken Hahn, who comes from that full-contact karate school where he's hitting me in the back of the head while I'm hitting the bag, I learned that pain is a temporary state.
I didn't go to business school. I actually didn't even graduate high school. I ended up with a GED. So everything that I've learned in business, I've learned through experience.
People think stage school is a little star factory but the truth is kids like me learned about being in a team situation and going out to work earlier than a lot of kids did. I don't know anyone from drama school who's now sitting on their arse doing nothing.
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.
