I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.
I studied with a blind teacher from about 5 until I was 16, at two different schools. From the age of 12 until 16, I was in a boarding school-which, I believe, at that time was compulsory for blind children.
I started kite boarding when I was 13. My dad was a kite boarder, and I begged him to teach me until he finally agreed. He made me wait because it can be dangerous.
So what I do is supervise the boarding process trying to get the shows the way I’d like them to be. And in some cases I’ve completely redone a board myself even though I’m not credited for it.
When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.
The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was sure about.
Like every other teenage girl, I was a great fan of Hrithik sir. This childhood crush was not like others though – the love for him was so deep in my heart that my boarding school hostel room was filled with his posters which I didn’t let any one touch. My heart was broken when I saw him getting married.
I was born in Dallas; then I moved to Allen, Texas. But then I got sent to boarding school, where I started to get fascinated with actors like Al Pacino.
My parents, Mary Agnes Smith and Rowland Smith, both had to work since their early teens, she in the holiday boarding house of her mother and he in his father’s market garden in Marton Moss, a village on the south side of Blackpool, just north of Saint Anne’s-on-Sea.
When I was 12, I went to boarding school, where I discovered the computer, which meant I no longer had to write something down and get someone to play it, I could just type it into the computer and hear it back.
My musical influences growing up were limited to Korean folk songs and hymns as I went to a Christian boarding school where I was not allowed to listen to secular music.
Boarding for me, like in the days of ‘Dexter,’ was really hard, because I couldn’t draw as well, and I had people around me who drew really well, so it was hard.
I was twelve when I went to boarding school in Edinburgh.
I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy,’ D.H. Lawrence’s novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.
Boarding school in Tring was a bit of a bubble that burst when I went to Hackney to go to drama school.
Mayo College, where I got my grounding, is a private boarding school. It is a traditional school with brilliant teachers including some from overseas.
My mum was working in London, so I went to school there until I was 12. But every holiday would be in Scotland, and when I went to boarding school, I’d either be there or Scotland.
His daughter returned from her boarding school, improved in fashionable airs and expert in manufacturing fashionable toys; but, in her conversation, he sought in vain for that refined and fertile mind which he had fondly expected.
I have a brilliant memory of being driven back to school when ‘Super Trouper’ was number one in the charts in 1980. When it came on the radio my mum just drove right past the school gates! When you’re 11 years old and meant to be going back to boarding school, that’s a great feeling.
I love hiking, paddle boarding and listening to the Veronicas.
I never have issues in handling the fame. I was in a boarding school, as I am from a middle-class family. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we all learned to respect money and understood its real value.
Going to Watford at such a young age and leaving everyone behind and being around new people was very different for me. Adapting was a challenge. I was staying in a boarding school and in a different culture that I wasn’t used to. It was very hard to adapt, build confidence and change my attitude.
People say how come I’m from Scotland yet I sound like the Queen?! I went to boarding school in Somerset, which has probably got something to do with it.
I was sent to boarding school at the age of ten. I think Mummy was trying to protect me in her own way, trying to spare me living through the day-to-day reality of her illness.
I went to boarding school Southern, religious, and straight, and I left boarding school not being at all religious and not being straight.
She was just Ma, and I didn’t grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn’t come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.
I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.
I was privileged in terms of where I grew up, and I come from a very loving, supportive household. But when I began to go off the rails at boarding school, my behaviour wasn’t a result of an upbringing but more something that was going on within me.
When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.
I’m from the Detroit area, just north of Detroit. But then I went to boarding school in northern Michigan, so a little bit colder up there. But beautiful, very beautiful.
In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. I knew that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet she was in pain, in need. She was unhappy. I believed that I could help her.
The first ‘Polly and the Pirates’ is about a prim and proper girl who gets kidnapped out of her comfy boarding school by a bunch of pirates that think she’s the daughter of their long lost queen. In the course of the adventure, she discovers she has a natural penchant for swashbuckling, despite her sheltered childhood.
It’s very nice when you’re checking onto a flight and the person behind the desk suddenly upgrades your seat for you and then hands you back the boarding pass and says, ‘It’s my favorite movie.’
I remember joining a boarding school in the sixth grade. I was lazy, complacent, and fat. Suddenly, I realised that I had to fend for myself. That’s when I discovered this drive within myself. For the first time, I ranked first in class, which was a miracle in itself. However, it didn’t matter to my family.
I spent half my life in a boarding school where we were shown only the sporadic wholesome classic like ‘The Sound Of Music.’ So, I am not familiar with most of the works of the acting greats in Bollywood, Hollywood, or Tamil-Telugu cinema.
Keeping with our family tradition of sending their children abroad for a couple of years, and aware of my interest in chemistry, I was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland when I was 11 years old, on the assumption that German was an important language for a prospective chemist to learn.
There’s just no doubt in my mind – under any set of rules – water boarding is torture.
Princeton was really hard. I had learned how to write well at boarding school, and I knew if I majored in English and I just did the work, I could get B’s.
I went through a period at boarding school when my coaches wanted me to switch to snowboarding because they thought I was no good at skiing. I was too skinny. I had terrible technique. They were saying I should be a snowboarder, and luckily, I resisted.
I’d heard that swimming feels so good when you’re pregnant, and I love being in the ocean. I was even paddle boarding up until 17 weeks, but then my center of gravity and balance were completely off.
My dad was in the Army. The Army’s not great pay, but, you know, we moved from Army patch to Army patch wherever that was. The Army also contributed to sending me off to boarding school.
My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me – nobody, like the football coach.
I went to boarding school at seven and cried and cried.
Homes make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with wife and children will defend it. Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding house. The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon the number of people who are the owners of homes.
When I came back to Mumbai after boarding school, I was 16 and I picked up weight training and yoga. This is when I also started dance classes and Pilates and then I started doing different workouts every month. I am now proficient in kick boxing, gymnastics, classical dance as well as yoga.
I was planning to go into law or politics. I was well known for my public speaking. I went to an all-girl boarding school with uniforms. It was very posh for someone like me who came from a world where my parents showed beagles and sold dog products out of a yellow caravan.
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