Even if a university should turn out to be another version of a school, I had decided I could lose myself afterwards as an anonymous particle of the London I already loved.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.
For me, university was just awful because it was closing one door after the other of all these candy shops of professional possibilities.
My parents would have loved me to go to university - Oxbridge, particularly.
I had a place to go to university; I was going to study history. I was in New York doing 'Arcadia,' and I suddenly thought, 'It feels a bit weird to go from a New York stage to Manchester University.' It didn't quite feel right.
I did not enjoy Cambridge. But I shouldn't blame Cambridge alone. I wasn't ready for university or for the wrench of leaving home. It was a big cultural shock.
I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.
I couldn't afford to go to drama school in London. Then I met with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and I fell in love with the city. It was one of the few schools that offered me a place. It didn't do me any harm.
My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.
I was delighted to not go to university. I couldn't wait to be out of education.
I liked Edinburgh as a university in a way that I'd never enjoyed King's College London. I realised after I came to Edinburgh that perhaps it was a mistake to have gone to a college which was bang in the centre of a vast city. It had a bad effect on the social life of the students because a lot of them were commuting from outer London.