When you’re young and a teenager, there’s an air of excitement about living with a time when you have to grasp life as much as you can because it may be taken from you.
I grew up in a country that was in a civil conflict for most of my childhood and adolescence. I saw violence and lived as a teenager through the time of a brutal dictator called Idi Amin. I fled and became a refugee.
It was all that stuff about taking your parents’ car when you’re 13, sneaking booze into rock shows and ditching school with your friends. I could relate to that as a former teenager, rather than as a present parent.
As a teenager, Tiger was self-assured and mature, yet also warm and charming. But the warm outward veneer gradually changed. When he pulled off his ‘win for the ages’ at the 1997 Masters, he already was sharing less of his softer, emotional side.
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
I remember, when I was a teenager, people telling me, ‘You know, when you are a mother, you will never feel lonely. You will feel so much love, and you will be fulfilled by this love.’ Then I became a mother. And I learnt that is absolutely wrong: you can feel very lonely with your children, even if you love them.
When I was a teenager, if you’d asked me, I would have said I was in a relationship with New York City. It was my first real love.
There’s an American idea that you want to look as young as you can for as long as you can. If you can be mistaken for a teenager from behind into your 50s, then you’ve won; you’ve succeeded.
I worked with James Orange and Hosea Williams as a teenager, and he’s portrayed in the movie by Wendell Pierce. So, for me to be able to come in, 20 years after working with them as a teenager, and to portray Reverend James Orange in ‘Selma’ is mind-blowing.
On ‘Glee,’ we often tackle the tough topics that young people face – in fact, my recurring character, Wade ‘Unique’ Adams, is a transgender teenager who finds herself navigating a lot of the same problems many young people face around the globe.
Every teenager, I think, thinks it’s the end of the world whenever anything happens, and it’s not. You’ll get through it. Life will be much more interesting and will certainly be broader when you’re older.
I was extremely curious growing up. I taught myself how to sew, French braid, and cook. When I wasn’t creating things with my hands, I was learning more about tech. I was experimenting with email at nine, had my first cell phone at 13, and was truly obsessed with the Internet as a teenager.
My mum lives in Boston; she’s famous for teaching wushu and t’ai chi. So from when I was young, my mum and aunt were like: ‘You’re training; you’re not playing baseball or football.’ Training every day was normal. Later, when I was almost a teenager, Bruce Lee became my idol.
I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a rock star, not an actor. It means I can do what I want on my own terms.
I worked on congressional campaigns when I was a teenager. I did United Way fundraisers when I was a teen. We advocated; we spoke out. I protested the first Iraq War in college.
Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.
I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, around 14 years old.
It’s a difficult world for lots of child actors, and it’s difficult to be a teenager under any circumstances. Add to that notoriety and fame, and things can go really wrong. But I had a terrific family and grew up very normal in Phoenix.
My heart and prayers go out to all single moms because it’s tough, and I can’t imagine any teenager dealing with a baby and all those hormones raging.
When I was a teenager, my dad used to call me ‘Hollywood’ because I wore sunglasses all the time, even at night. Cue song.
When you were a teenager in Colorado, the way to be a punk rocker was to rip on Reagan and Bush and what they were doing and talk about how everyone in Colorado’s a redneck with a gun and all this stuff.
When I was a teenager, I did one animated series back when I was on ‘General Hospital.’ It was 1971 or ’72. Then I didn’t do animation until ‘Batman.’
I wrote ‘Love Is Dead’ when I was a super-depressed teenager.
I was really into sports, playing track and field, amateur wrestling, volleyball, and soccer. I was a very active kid and teenager.
I’ve had an extraordinary life as a dancer. You tour the world, you see all the great capitals of the world, the beautiful old opera houses all over Europe – you go everywhere. As a teenager, I would always say, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to little me,’ because it was always a dream to dance.
I’ve had more acne as an adult than I had as a teenager. After weaning babies, my skin’s gone totally bonkers. I didn’t even know about dermatologists until I had weaned my first baby, and my skin was so damaged. It was just beyond. And then, I realized, there’s a whole doctor who can help you with this.
You don’t need a foreign policy expert to tell you empty threats and hollow promises don’t work. Ask any parent of a rebellious teenager. If you don’t make good on the threats, you’re asking for worse behavior next time.
I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music – jazz, swing, Motown, pop – and that inspired what kind of music I started to write.
As a gymnast, you always wear spandex. Being a teenager wearing spandex? It was tough accepting how my body looked, especially if there was any weight gain.
The guitar saved me from a life of crime as a teenager.
I was always being told to calm down, to chill out, to slow down. I was a bad toddler, I was a bad child, I was a bad teenager.
I was a wedding singer as a teenager.
Think about being a teenager and feeling like school is just about taking tests you may or may not be interested in, after which someone will judge whether or not you’re smart. No one’s going to be inspired by that.
I started as a teenager going up on commercials.
I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.
I found being a teenager quite difficult, actually. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and now, looking back at it, I really wish that I had relaxed and just enjoyed it more.
Since I was a child, I always loved music that made me want to dance. As a teenager, I used to dance the night away to electronic music.
I was into Alan Moore and Frank Miller. I was a teenager when all those books where coming out for the first time – ‘Watchmen,’ ‘V for Vendetta.’ It was a great time to get into comics.
As a teenager, I would wear Clarks, corduroy pants and striped shirts, and I loved it.
When I was a teenager, I never knew anything about art. I think in South Africa at that stage, no one was really exposed to it. There were no museums that had great artists in them.
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.
I’m still Vanessa from the neighborhood. My parents own the shop, and I’m there all the time, that I worked in when I was a teenager. I have a child from my childhood sweetheart.
‘The Driver’ wasn’t commercially successful at the time, but when I was a teenager, I had no knowledge of that.
I started doing comedy when I was a teenager with Tom Kenny, who is the voice of SpongeBob. I don’t want to name drop, but, I’ve known him since I was 6.
I was a little adult for my age as a teenager, and I didn’t feel like I socially fit in with my peers.
Sometimes I have to pause to make the distinction between Ben the teenager and Ben the businessman.
Take ‘Jack and Diane.’ I was so disgusted with people thinking the line ‘Hold on to sixteen as long as you can’ meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive.
As a teenager, I was in the Carlisle schoolboy scheme and while I was excited to join at first, I look back on it as a tough few years.
I did some pretty bad things as a teenager. When I was 13, I took my friend’s mom’s car out for a joyride, and I actually managed to hit somebody else’s car. No one was hurt, but needless to say, I didn’t get behind the wheel again until I had my driver’s license.
I can’t possibly overstate how much influence Rush had on me as a young teenager. I would say from about 1981 to 1987, they were my gods.
Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were.
I’m so associated with being young and being with a teenager.
I used to spray tan a lot when I was a teenager. The last time I got spray-tanned was for the Golden Globes. And I was like, ‘I love spray-tanning so much.’ I still really like it. But it definitely makes me look like I have leprosy, after a point.
A maturing process, and growth, is always painful. You ask any teenager, they will tell you, and it’s just like that for the country. We need to grow; we need to evolve.
I was not a happy teenager in the slightest.
I think being a teenager is a difficult journey in and of itself, but being transgender makes it that much harder.
