I went to high school directly across the street from Carnegie Mellon, actually, and I knew people that were a couple of years older than me that went there. I was able to see shows in the drama department, and hang out there little bit, and it just felt like a natural progression. It was at the top of my list.
I think I integrated that over the first couple of years that I was out of school, mostly in auditions, to be honest.
I've been looking for ways to audition more, because it also keeps me sharp and keeps my ambition at its firm edge. That's something that I'm actively engaged in conversations about now with my reps: What's out there that I can really either put myself on tape for, or meet with the director for and read for? How do we do that? We're now at the end of the Star Trek reboot trilogies and whether we are going to do another movie remains to be seen, and so I feel like I'm at the end of this cycle that began with me coming out of school and auditioning and building my way up.
My high school experience was pretty good, but my middle school experience was god awful. It was horrible. I got picked on like no tomorrow.
I'm not versed enough in constitutional law to run for office. I'd have to go back to school or something.
I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.
I always wanted to direct movies. That's what I set out to do. When I was a little kid I just dreamed of making movies, and I went to film school [at Northwestern University].
I don't like the idea of drama schools. They only perpetuate the myth that everyone can do what I do
I like to drop in on people who picked on me in high school or whatever, just out of the blue, and chat with them to see how they think of me now that I'm a big star. Usually they're a lot nicer. After about half an hour, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and leave a few DVDs or pictures there. Then when I come out, I say good-bye and leave. Then I call the cops.
I went to film school and wanted to learn everything there was about making movies.
I had no interest in sports so I didn't make friends in that traditional way where kids are in public school and they go and they join clubs, and play sports. So I kind of had to find my own way to make friends and get attention and so I just was the class clown.
I started cooking out of middle school depression.
If you'd have asked me when I was auditioning for High School Musical if I ever thought I was going to play a Marine.
I have studied at the school of the world.
I remember, in elementary school, being asked what my father does and not knowing how to answer. When I asked my mom what I should say next time, she replied, "Just say he's self-employed." I love that.
I picked up On The Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch (in that order) in high school. I was blown away. The writing was amazing and the places it took me was even more far out. It opened up new avenues of thinking for me and so I went down the beaten road.
I never went to art school and I never thought of going to an art school. It was just a way of manifesting these ideas I had. Ideas came to me that I needed to express.
When I was four years old, my mother put me into a school for early music education where you get perfect pitch and harmony and composition.
When I was 4 years old my mother put me into an early music education school. That's where they taught you perfect pitch and harmony and how to write music and all that. At that time, one of the homeworks was to listen to all the sounds and the noise of a day and transfer that into musical notes.
With Submarine, when I came out of school, people were so lovely and supportive. And you don't get that experience very often. It felt like a family on-set. So Submarine changed so much for me.
I was 17 when it was being filmed and so I was at an age where you are learning a lot about yourself. I came out of school to film it, and I hadn't been having a good time in school before that. I get quite shy around big groups of people. If I meet people, especially my peers and people my own age, I always struggle because I've always worked with adults and they have a tendency to molly coddle you a bit when you're the youngest on-set.
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.
I remember there was a little organ which I'd tap my fingers on all the time. My interest in the instrument was so obvious, one day I got home from school and there was a real piano in my bedroom.
Somehow, in the novel format, I don't really like to do upfront, ideological discussion. In my heart, literature remains a poetic and ambiguous medium. On the other hand, I trained as a documentary filmmaker in film school, so my films very much reflect reality and socio-political problems. They're less subtle I would say.
As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too."
