As a kid, I'd go into the bathroom when I was having a tantrum. I'd be in the bathroom crying, studying myself in the mirror. I was preparing for future roles.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.
As a kid I would be put to bed when my parents had guests and because I was such a show-off I would go to my mum's room, put on her nightdress and Jackie Onassis shawl, run downstairs, go outside, ring the doorbell and pretend to be one of the guests. I'd say, 'Hello, I'm Mrs. So-and-So.'
I would leave school and go to my theater class, and that's when I'd actually sit down and listen. I wouldn't pay attention in school, or I'd sing in class and get in trouble - I'd always get in trouble. Theater is the only thing I always came back to.
I would be in a room full of people being loud and running around, and I'd be in the corner just playing with the wall. So I was very, very quiet, but when I really got into the arts, that opened me up.
I would walk into my office, and I would close the door, and I would say, 'I won't cry, I won't cry, I won't cry'... At least, I wasn't going to let them see me cry.
I'd been kind of a hiccup in my parents' lives. They lost track of me and I didn't know what I was going to do with myself. And then fate reached in and took me in its hands. I was discovered right out of high school and started getting work.
I'd be totally exhausted by mid-afternoon, and I could barely climb the stairs at home. It was particularly alarming because all my life I'd enjoyed doing all my own stunts in shows, taking on every physical challenge. Yet suddenly, I'd become like a very old man. I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea what.
When I was in college, I would go out, and I would go to these open mic nights at Stitches and Nick's Comedy Stop, so I was going to classes during the day, and then at night, I would be signing up on the lists.
There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.
I'd lie in bed in my dormitory and grab at bits of my body, wanting to tear them off... I was so large by then that, in the heat, my thighs chafed together and bled. I was very unhappy, and yet no one ever asked me how I felt.