When I was in year nine at school I was told I'd get no GCSEs by teachers who didn't believe in me - but I ended up leaving with 13 A*s to Cs so I'm pretty proud of that.
I ended up dropping out of high school. I'm a high school dropout, which I'm not proud to say, ... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, 'You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?' I had teachers who I could tell didn't want to be there. And I just couldn't get inspired by someone who didn't want to be there
At 13, in my first year of Tonbridge, I went up for the part of Macbeth. I was up against the 17- and 18-year-olds, but for some reason I got the part. It made me incredibly unpopular with my peers, but it was the English and drama teachers who stepped in to save me when others wanted me kicked out of the school.
About a year after leaving drama school or a year and a half - and I was working solidly ever since leaving drama school - I picked up 'Game of Thrones.'
I'm losing friendships over forgetting to get back to people. But you can't keep up with everything. I've got a 13-year-old, a nine-year-old and a baby.
Growing up in rural Utah had a lot of benefits, but in an environment that prized conformity, fit wasn't one of them. I ended up in my senior year with a 0.9 GPA, which I think you actually have to work pretty hard to get. In the exact same month they kicked me out of school, my girlfriend - still my wife today - told me she was pregnant. So, it was an interesting start to life: working 10 or 12 minimum-wage jobs; getting bored really quickly and quitting; having my in-laws - rightly - in full panic mode and thinking I had some kind of character flaw.
My brother was a year younger than I am and he was never in the home with me hardly at all, ... My mom had to take him to every school there possibly was to get him some education. He ended up first in Columbus, Ohio, for grade school, then went to a high school for the deaf and Galludet in Washington.
I never did theater. I was a theater major at USC my first year because I didn't get into the film school. I was biding my time, hoping to be accepted to film school, and I ended up transferring to UCLA my sophomore year.
Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.
Usually for a movie, if you want a 13-year-old, you get a 16-year-old who looks 13, because 13-year-olds dont have that level of self-awareness.
My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
I was causing trouble in high school, and in order to get me to stop and to pass, they put me into theater, and I ended up winning a Shakespeare competition. All I had to do was imitate people properly, and I ended up going to the finals when I was about 16.
One day, I just ended up thinking, 'You know what? If we get to 13-0, it's not me. If we go 10-2, it's not me.'
I was a pretty heartbroken 13-year-old. That was the year my grandmother died and my parents split up.
I took a detour to France in my senior year in high school. So that's part of what ended up sending me, actually, to Middlebury because I went to school with people who were more from the Northeast.
I enjoyed school until the age of 13 - I loved my teachers, my friends. Then, suddenly, you get thrown into a boys' school, and the ecosystem changed, and I wasn't sure where I fitted in. I was still always the clown, but I wasn't inspired, I guess.
I believe leaving school early was the right decision to make, but at first, I wasn't sure. But my coaches told me to follow my heart and there wouldn't be any regrets, and that's exactly what I did.