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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's not like I had big dreams to go to California and become an actor. I loved doing my shows at school and community theater, and I probably would have settled in New York because it was closer. I was going to go to NYU.
Even though I went to Exeter and Yale, and I enjoyed all the trappings of those places, I think at the same time - and maybe it's because I'm an immigrant kid and not white - there was always this other consciousness; that is, I was conscious of everything that was going on.
My time at Barnard was fun but stressful. I transferred there from the acting conservatory at NYU, and my Rolling Around On the Floor Pretending to Be a Lion classes didn't translate into many academic credits.
I never had intention of coming to New York or L.A. and actually doing more than scraping by - you know, doing plays. And as my career sort of progressed of its own volition, I did come to New York.
I came to NYU to study experimental theater. Shortly thereafter, I was featured in a 'Newsweek' article about the emerging downtown club scene, and, well, that was it for NYU. I was off and running.
Before I left for Germany, I had gotten accepted to the performing arts high school in New York, which was a big dream of mine. And having to leave that was very sad for me.
I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.
I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature. People find it odd that I went to both Harvard and Yale, and I guess it is odd, but that's just what people did where I grew up.
When I first moved to New York, all I did was musical theater. That's what I studied at Carnegie Mellon University.
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.