My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My parents were the first in our family to go to grammar school. My grandparents were in service.
My father was a sheep shearer, so I grew up in a caravan; we'd go around from shearing shed to shearing shed. My mother always wanted us to be educated, so I went to a school.
I went to elementary school in Ottawa, and then to a private secondary school.
I went to a state school in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then straight on to the University of Canterbury. But I worked part-time all the way through high school: first with a paper round, then at a fast-food outlet, a video store and a hardware store.
When I was six or seven, we went to the nearest English primary school, St Weonards, about seven miles away. The teaching was good, and this was the start of my beginning to shine as a student.
Being a young Kiwi lad, a young Polynesian boy, I was pretty close to my family. But when I moved to Sydney, I went from training twice a week, playing touch footy with my mates, to working full-time as a labourer and training professionally.
We emigrated to South Africa and later to Canada so I went to school in several places.
I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education.
I didn't do very well when I was at school, so my dad gave me the opportunity to travel in Africa. I drove from London to Nairobi. It was incredible.
I went to a school called Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. I went because initially I was very naughty, and my mom thought if I was busy, I'd be better. And I didn't really do acting until later on in the school, with an amazing teacher. I left, went traveling, came back.