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I went to quite an academic school, and all my friends were going to university, but even before my acting jobs, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to spend another three years being institutionalised, and I feel that getting out of that system benefited me in quite a few ways.

I did a year at Leeds, studying English. They basically threw me out, because I was taking too much time off to act. So I transferred to the Open University, because I could do it all online. By that point, I had admitted to myself that I had the acting bug.

I got into medicine at university, then deferred a year to see. Then I started acting and just never went back to university.

I remember a distinct moment when it was my junior year of college, and the content I was making was changing and not really myself, and I tried to switch back to just putting me out there. I'm happy that happened really early in my career, because that was before I started doing podcasts or writing.

I've always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor - I never would have imagined that. Writing books - I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. - I'm not sure I would even have imagined that. I've lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.

It was fun being an actor, but by the time college rolled around, I was ready to try some new things. By the time I graduated, I realized I enjoyed having a normal life and I never went back.

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.

In college, that was when I felt that acting is the one I really wanted because I got to be my true self; this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

It was only when I finished the course and left my graduation diploma on the bus that I realised I'd become an actor.