Music was my oxygen. It's what saved me from being a really lonely and scared teenager.
I come from a visual background. I used to work in the camera department at Warner Bros. when I was a teenager. I grew up dusting lenses and learning about photography.
In the '80s, I was the only one who didn't watch the shows about teenagers. I had to go over to friends' houses to see them. I still don't have a TV!
The biggest problem I had - and the biggest problem teenagers have - is not how they dress, how they look or how they act or talk. It's how they see themselves - their self-esteem. In the tenth grade, I realized I am who I am. I've got big ears and big feet. I can etiher sulk around or I can be happy with who I am. The minute I decided to be confident with who I was, all that other stuff stopped. It's all in the way you carry yourself.
I was, without exaggeration, a delinquent teenager.
For a long time our son ws a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.
I think that what I knew as a teenager, and what I rediscovered in my mid-forties, was - aside from the primacy of sexual desire and how strongly it rules me - this idea that we are lucky to feel something. Even if that something is sadness.
I know, it's true. I've played these tortured teenagers. I can't wait to shed that image.
At every stage in life you think about death. But teenagers especially are sort of invincible. They're not supposed to be thinking about dying yet, or else they'd be too afraid to live.
I was a teenager in the '80s - and maybe I'm wrong about this - but it seemed like a bad era for movies that were scary. It was really the height of movies that were disgusting.
Why would twenty-six-year-old "teenagers" care about political ramifications if their backs are not up against the wall? But if their backs are against the wall they may be plucked to fight in Iraq, and all of sudden they become politicized real quick.
As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.
Ever since I was a teenager, I was always kind of, like, checking myself. You know, like, "Come on man, don't get your head all swollen. Life and time itself will give you perspective on what you're doing." So, that's actually what's always been a reminder in my own head.
I became an actor by accident. I suppose I figured since I was in musical comedy from the time I was a teenager, I suppose I figured that I'd always been in that world to some extent.
I also remember when I watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer [1990] at, like, age 15. That scared the crap out of me. Because it didn't operate inside the usual conventions of the horror genre in the way that I could accept. I can accept horny teenager counselors being murdered at camp. But I couldn't accept the derangement of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which was that anyone could be murdered at any moment - whole families, with no build-up music and no meaning. It terrified me.
An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record.
As a teenager, my favourite rejection was, 'She looks too healthy,' which of course translates as, 'She needs to lose weight.'
When I was a little girl - well, like, a teenager - I wanted to be Sam Jackson. I always wanted to be men.
I think my anorexia was to do with being a teenager, not being in films.
You have to excuse me because I AM a teenager, so I'm allowed to sound illiterate and make stupid comments like 'I'm not into hard-core feminism.'
My mom was a cheerleader and had me as a teenager. I remember her giving me some pom-poms and teaching me how to do some splits when I was 3 or 4.
When you're a teenager with a creative mind, be as creative as possible. I'd rather you go nuts. Having more ideas is always better.
A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear.
Before I was a comedian, I thought the coolest thing that would happen to me was being a teenager... Boy, was I wrong!
I wanted to be a martial arts film star when I was a teenager.
