I always knew I wanted to do comedy. I like making people laugh. I started out young just making my family laugh and trying to make kids laugh in school and getting into plays. I think it's the only thing I know how to do so hopefully it works out.
I came from a very comfortable, middle-class family living in Highland Park, Illinois.Really growing up in a Jewish community with a fabulous public school.
I was at Harvard Medical School and there were not a lot of, kind of, community health options, and I wound up at - sort of in Harvard Community Health Center for various reasons.
As I came through medical school, it was very exciting because physicians were reaching out to each other, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and sort of helping to build bridges among, you know, people, people who were not allowing our government to pit us against each other and to actually take us to the brink of nuclear war. And Physicians for Social Responsibility wound up getting a Peace Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize, which they shared with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
I remember learning about the Holocaust when I was in kindergarten and being terrified. I think we even watched a graphic video about it in Jewish day school. Although I was quite young, I remember making these vows to myself such as, I'm never going to love my country so much that I can't leave in a moment's notice.
I do not think that you can try and systematize education for the whole world. I would try experiments in small communities and in schools to see how they work out, instead of taking the children of an entire nation and trying to bring them up on the same system.
This project started nearly twenty years ago as an assignment in my typography class at art school. Students were encouraged to see letters beyond their dull, practical functionality. We played with their unique shapes and tinkered with their infinite possibilities. The challenge was hard, so the reward of “cracking” a word felt great. This became a lifelong project for me.
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 went to university and studied English literature, and I forgot about music. I was gonna be a journalist. But then I decided to try and be a backing singer, and my mum was like, "Go for it." If that didn't work, I was gonna go to law school. I was just being boringly sensible; trying to be a singer felt a bit indulgent.
I never had a doubt about wanting to be an actress, but certainly when there were periods of unemployment, I would think, "Oh, I'm never going to work again." The only thing I don't like about it is the business part of it - the negotiating and all this stuff that you don't learn in school. I'm not good with business.
I think I was in high school, actually, and it was a guidance counselor or someone said, you know, you're just too loud; like you need to just stop talking so much and stop being so opinionated; like no one wants to listen to you because you're really annoying. And I'm glad that I didn't shut up, because it seems like people are listening.
There's a very small percentage of people that take limos to school and have $2000 handbags - no one in my high school had that!
The thing is, I moved tons. I was in like nine schools by ninth grade, so I moved a ton of times when I was younger. As hard as that was growing up, it helped me in so many ways being an actress, because every year I was constantly changing who I was. I could be someone new. I wouldn't care if people judged me or didn't like me because, in the end, I knew I was probably going to move in a few months anyway.
I was in like nine schools by ninth grade, so I moved a ton of times when I was younger.
I am very sure that my children thrive on structure and need boundaries. I know my children need to know what time they are going to bed or how many more minutes until they are leaving for school, and so I have imposed a structure that allows them to know where they are all day long, every day in life.
During the week, my days are consumed with school commitments, play-dates and work for Baby Buggy, a nonprofit I started, which collects kids' gear for parents in need. So on weekends, I look forward to uninterrupted time with my family.
I did play Jesus in 'Godspell,' in high school, because I guess I'm a nerd.
It's quite funny in that I once won Rear of the Year at my school! I was about 17 in the sixth form and we used to have an end of year celebration and give out different awards. I even got a little trophy!
I grew up half the time in a small town called Mart, Texas, and half the time in L.A., because I was acting. My high school was crazy about football.
I went out with the same girl throughout all four years of high school.
I went to school every day, like everyone else, and I played baseball for my high school team. I was a part of a lot of different activities outside of school.
I went to a public high school that had a very small graduating class of 156 students. I lived a relatively normal childhood until I turned probably around 16. Things started to take off career-wise.
When we take out school psychologists, truant officers, counselors, art, music, and athletics, and bring in the police, the school gets turned into a feeder system for the penal system.
The fact is in a city like Chicago, for example, unemployment in the black community is around 20 percent for adults, 35 percent for youth, they bail out the banks, public schools, there is a deep divide. We need a plan for reconstruction and redevelopment and I hope that - police are the gatekeepers but behind that gate are these problems of disparities and injustice.
I find people who want to help other people to be the most interesting. I come from a family of teachers, and my friends are teachers, often times in very difficult school situations.
