We had a teacher in school who would organize dramatic shows. And she decided to put on a show about - I don't know whether you remember - 'Ferdinand the Bull', the comic script. However, she decided, you're going to sing Ferdinand, me, as a role.
I live in the social purgatory of the San Fernando Valley, while my eldest daughter is bused to a charter school in the fantasy land of Bel Air.
I commuted an hour and a half each way to high school in N.Y.C. I took a bus, a ferry, then a subway.
All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.
Oh, I have this feud going with the L.A. Unified School District, because I keep getting these phone calls saying my daughter keeps missing classes, I mean, at all hours of the night, I had like, two calls this morning and I keep calling saying I haven't got a daughter!
I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.
When I was in high school and college, my other real focus was, actually, fiction writing. So in college, I had done all these seminars with these various writers-in-residence.
'Swagger' would be the word for 'Dirt On My Boots.' With the real funky drum loop and the ganjo rolling down, and then the fiddles and the guitar and steel, it really took an old school style where it's fiddle, steel, guitar, and mixed it with a drum loop.
We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does.
I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of 'Fiddler on the Roof' when I was in third grade or fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say.
I never bothered with cars. I was probably one of the few kids in school who didn't run around with hot-rod magazines. As I would be at home fiddling with my guitar, they would be fiddling with a car engine.
At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.
I was like a closet makeup fiend as a little girl because I knew that I would be guffawed at in school if I wore too much makeup.
From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.
At 23 it was all about acting. Today it's getting my kids to school, making sure that they've done their homework. I'm in my fifties, and I'm turning into a square.
My whole life, I wanted to be a fighter pilot; it's what I wanted to do. I set up all of my classes for it, but I got lazy my senior year in high school and didn't get my paperwork in.
What was really funny is that as I got older all those guys who called me a sissy in junior high school wanted me to be their best friend because they wanted to meet all the girls that I knew in figure skating.
Largely, I began skating because I wanted stuff to do outside of school. My mom decided to put me into figure skating.
I worked my way through art school as an auto mechanic, doing various stuff including sanding bodywork and using Bondo filler.
When I was a kid, I played basketball religiously. I begged my mom to get me voice lessons because I wanted to learn to sing the right way, but at the same time, I was playing Junior Olympic basketball, and I was playing point guard for my school. But I was wanting to get into entertainment, into music and film and television.
