When I first started acting, I was just crap.
I studied drama in high school, and when I was 18, I studied at the Actors Studio in New York. Then I moved to London when I got engaged to Bryan Ferry, and I studied at the National Theatre there.
I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was growing up, really. So when I decided to go to university instead of drama school, it was with the intention of becoming an actor afterwards.
I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.
I grew up in Los Angeles, and my first musical theatre experiences were at the Music Center in downtown L.A.
My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting.
When I left Cambridge, I applied to regional repertory theaters in the U.K. and got accepted by one of them... And here I am, still at it.
Maybe it's a bit snobby, but it's as if you're a proper actor if you do stage.
I've acted professionally since I was 16.
I really wanted to be a Broadway kid.
My working history as an actor is definitely in the theatre; it certainly was in Australia.
I've been acting since I was 5 years old, from primary school to secondary school, did training at drama school, which was the big thing for me because they trained me, put me out into the industry.
I used to be one of the lead actors of a theatre group called Hetu when I was in medical school. Prithvi Theatre was our stomping ground. I'd got many positive reviews.
I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. But then a lady at the youth theatre asked me if I'd ever thought of going to drama school.
If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.
I started doing repertory theatre in upstate New York when I was 15, went back when I was 16, and by that time decided that I really wanted to study drama seriously and go to an acting conservatory called Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
I had always wanted to be an actress. I went to summer theater camp from kindergarten on up until high school, and always had the leads in all the plays - even though they were at the YMCA - but it was something I always wanted to do.
I've done maybe twelve of Shakespeare's plays. I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for years. Whatever influence that has never leaves you. If you learn to drive a car, and you learn the right way if there is ever a right way. You learn the good aspects, you learn to drive properly. And that never leaves you.
Because I'd done 30 plays or so at Oxford, I thought that I was an actress anyway because that's what I was doing!
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor, financially, emotionally, egotistically. I still don't think I'm in comedy.
I announced to my mother one day when I was 8 that I wanted to be a serious actress.
I wound up graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts as a theatre major and then was honored to be accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Musical Theatre program.
I was a 2-year-old baby on something, but it's not like I had lines. But I actually had my first lines when I was 4. And then I finished school, and I went to USC for their BFA program in acting.
I remember hearing that when Judi Dench was starting out at the Old Vic, she used to stand by the side of the stage watching the actors around her, and I can see why: That is where you really learn!
At 17, I became a member of the Boston Repertory Theatre. I had an opportunity pretty quickly and performed with the theater for six years.
