The very rough story is this: Melbourne boy, out of both my parents' houses at a young age, lived with my grandmother, drama teacher twisted me into doing this TV thing that I thought my mates were doing, too.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I bugged my mom and dad to 'get me inside the television set' when I was about four years old.
When I went to drama school, I thought that everybody would think I was only there because my dad was on TV.
I grew up in the world of bad television, on my dad's sets and then as a young schmuck on dating shows and so on.
I've gone from a kid who was sneaking out of my childhood house and lying to my parents to do shows in a community theatre in Reading, PA, to now having two shows on Broadway opening within two months of each other. That's sort of crazy, that trajectory.
My parents separated it, and that let me know that TV life wasn't my normal life; that was my job and my hobby.
My mum and dad's hobby was amateur dramatics.
I was 11 when a teacher suggested to my parents that they should send me to drama classes to curb my disruptive ways in the classroom. The next Saturday I was acting, and thereafter it became a ritual of my youth to see a show at the Belvoir on Sundays and, if I was lucky, another at the Opera House on Monday after school.
When I was doing all this acting stuff, all these kids, like, assumed, 'Oh, my God, you're on TV, and you probably have a lot of money.' And I was living in a garage.
What happened was, my parents after 'Circus Boy' decided to take me out of show business for two years to go back to normal school. It was the smartest thing they ever did.
When I came out of drama school, I was in a shared house in Sydney.