My music teacher who I was really close with, she helped me out a lot being away from home and going to school in Rhode Island. She was like a mother to me on campus. But she was the theater teacher and she didn't have anyone to play Aladdin, so she asked me if I would.
I always knew where I was going eventually, so it helped me to stay at home for three years. It helped me to develop my game. But it also helped me off the ice. Life here is way different, and I was able to get older.
I was blessed throughout my entire career. I had people rooting for me. It started with my parents, but it extended to almost every teacher that I had. Even when I was a young lawyer, there were other women and men in the firm who took me under their wing.
I grew up around a lot of the major leaguers, guys like David Wright, Pedro Martinez, Jose Reyes, and I think that's what really helped me. You see the routine they get, the humility they have.
Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.
As I got older I learned how to control my temper a little more. Boxing helped me a lot and most definitely when I had my first child it helped me tremendously.
Joe [Wright] reached out to me and sent me a treatment, and I said yes on the spot just from the treatment. Within six weeks, I was in Cape Town and there was a script [of Black Mirror episode 'Nosedive'], but I didn't realize until I received the full script that Rashida [Jones] and Michael [Schur] had worked on it. It's a particularly funny episode. Joe and I always looked at it as a satire; it has a lot of comedic elements to it.
As an actor and as a performer, I've felt that the education system has really helped me in a lot of ways... there was always a teacher or a professor along the way that kept pushing me to the next stage.
People who are interested with me have for sure gotten older over the years, for example, grandparents are coming up to me telling me they grew up watching me.
Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I'm very, very grateful; it's a fun job. It's a luxury.
[Jack Johnson] really helped me make the record, put it out, and then let me tour with him for two years. He really helped me out.
You wouldn't match Melanie and me up, and if we hadn't gotten stuck together as lab partners in junior high science, I doubt if we'd have matched us up either. I'm not sure why we even stuck, except that we each probably find the other to be entertaining...Besides I feel like it was a personal mission of mine to broaden Melanie's world, though I think she felt the same for me.
If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.
Pressure to me now has become almost part of my life. It doesn't really affect me anymore. People talk about me being under pressure or having pressure of having to come in and be this great player that everyone expects me to be right away. It doesn't really faze me. It's become second nature now. It's almost like it would be weird not to have it.
I've got people who like Tommy Boy, but they're getting older and there's a whole new wave of college kids who see that and Joe Dirt, and Just Shoot Me is a little older, so I wanted stuff for everybody.
My brother was a fantastic cheerleader for my development as a musician. He was almost 10 years older than me and would really push me to develop as a songwriter.