One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something I enjoy?
I quit high school to be a pro skateboarder out of Ohio, which is just asinine, but it was meant to be.
You know when I was a high school student I wasn't a very good student. Upon graduation we were asked if we would become a full working adult or go to university. I decided to go to film school and still to this day I try to avoid being a full working adult.
In my house, education was the paramount value. And if you grew up in a neighborhood like mine, you were forced to decide early on what you stood for in life, because there were a lot of peer pressures that could take you the wrong way.
At an early age, I quit high school at 17 and joined the Air Force.
I went in the Marines when I was 16. I spent four and a half years in the Marines and then came right to New York to be an actor. And then seven years later, I got my first job.
Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.
But when my grandmother saw me plucking [my eyebrows] she said: 'Don't. You will regret it. One day you will wake up with no eyebrows and think how stupid you were. Your eyebrows are the most beautiful thing about you.'
I lived in New York City, and when I was about 24 in the 1980s, I decided to get out of here. I wanted to go live in Australia for a year or something, and it ended up being 18 years.
I moved to New York to do a play when I was 18.
I never went to church when I was in college, either.
When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.
My parents went out of their way for me ever since I left school. When I was 15, I said to Mum, 'I'm leaving school,' and she was like, 'Okay.' I joined a cover band and played three nights a week, and they were really supportive of that.
By the time I entered high school, I had forsaken academics altogether in favor of my burgeoning acting career.
I moved out to L.A. when I was 17, dropped out of high school, and pursued a career in music.
I stopped going to high school when I met Big Pun, which wasn't the smartest thing. So I never got my diploma. When I went to prison, it's mandatory to get your GED if you don't have a high school diploma.
I left school just shy of 17: I'd started going into touring and that situation.
Often, kids don't appreciate the choices available, as if it's either the street or nothing.
I'd been in love with her for years. I never left this suburban town. I didn't go to university. I went to Audrey.
I skipped ninth grade. I went from eighth to tenth, and then I graduated a year early to start working, and it was a big blessing for me because I was not a school person, although I really do miss having that kind of environment.
My favorite subject was English, and I wanted to study English abroad when I was young, when I was a kid, but my mom said 'No, it's too dangerous to go abroad by yourself.' So I gave up.
You can determine the kind of life you will have in your 30s and 40s by what you do in your teens.
What was my dream when I was 18? My big decision when I was 18 was full keg or pony-size keg. I knew by about 16 or 17 that I was going to be an actor. That was based on the fact that there were not a lot of things that I could be really good at, or that I would enjoy enough to not run out of the building screaming.
At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.
I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place. People have given me a lot of grief, but I'm pretty sure that after high school, this girl would have started anyway, especially if she chose the army over community college.
