And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.
My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school.
I was very happy in Bombay. I was good at school. There was no reason to change anything. I suppose it must have been some spirit of adventure, of wanting to see the world.
When I finally decided to leave school and pursue acting, my parents didn't take it very lightly. My friends thought that it was the tackiest thing they'd ever heard of. Acting was really beneath them. They couldn't believe that I would want to become an actress. Not now, of course.
I definitely used to write a lot at school. Comic poetry and drawings about people.
Being at school, being who I am, being an athlete, it was hard to find people like me. There's not many athletes that can be at my level. That was kind of hard finding people who love something so much they want to keep on doing it.
My point is that, over the years, I've taught five thousand people acting and lately I have a lot of energy on these kids, having the same break I had as a high school girl.
I grew up with 'Jane Eyre,' reading it at school, and it's one of those, I think, for a lot of women, a lot of girls, it's the iconic story and so many girls relate to Jane Eyre and her character.
I first started acting in primary school, just doing little plays. And from the moment I began, something just went 'click' inside me. Suddenly I wasn't shy anymore. Instead I felt confident and happy. I can remember the enormous sense of relief it gave me. I loved the feeling of making people laugh.
I never felt safe. In high school, acting is what I did to stay sane. It wasn't about showing off; it was about revealing parts of myself that I couldn't reveal anyplace else.
When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.
The first rules about Islamic law weren't even written down for a century and a half after the Prophet's death, and it was another five centuries, half a millennium, before they assumed anything like a definitive form. So there have always been huge arguments over what Islamic law actually requires. There are four main schools of law in Sunni thought and there's a separate school of law in Shia thought, so these arguments do take place.
The good thing about the Anvil school of filmmaking was that it was fly by the seat of your pants. There was no safety net.
I went to film school and studied Alfred Hitchcock. I knew of Alma Reville existence, but had no idea really who she was or how influential she was on him. She stayed in the shadows. Go online, and there are hardly any images or film of her. She really stayed out of the limelight on purpose. She didn't want it, and I think that's one of the reasons that she's really lost in the shadows of Hitchcock's history to a degree.
You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on... much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I'd ever been taught in school.
I don't know why I go to school unless for kicks, oh well might as well do dissect a frog.
I received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school.
Eventually, I won the right to attend school, but the prejudice was still there.
I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.
I wasnt particularly funny in high school, but I grew up with three older brothers who were quite funny.
I just motor through school in the morning and then go skating.
I had been accepted to film school, but my parents couldn't afford it, and yet they made too much money for me to get a scholarship.
I was probably just graduating high school, maybe still in high school. When I was still in high school, maybe the last two years, I was rapping but I wasn't telling anybody. When I signed my deal people didn't know it was the same Ryan Montgomery from Oak Park High School, because I used to play basketball and I used to fight. Like I'd bring boxing gloves to school. So when they found out, it was, "You mean Ryan who be boxing?" or, "Ryan who be hopping up at the park?" So I was known as that guy.
People also knew me for putting people up to hip-hop, so people knew I was heavy into hip-hop. But as for cyphers and stuff in high school, I would never get on it because I was too shy. That's pretty much what I was doing.
I'm not saying my teachers should have rapped my lessons or anything, but I feel if I had made more of a connection to them I would have gotten more out of school.
