When I was 14, a lot of people said, "She's such a good actress, she loves theater, she looks like a woman, she should consider moving to L.A. and trying to do this professionally." My parents were hesitant, but they would take me.
Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.
I had a teacher at school who said, 'We are going to do a play next year, and you're in it.' He said, 'You should try out for the Royal Academy as an actor.' I did and got in. I was 17. My mum wasn't too happy, but it worked out OK.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that most champions are born into certain environments and encouraged early. Then, later on, they might get some assistance from their federations.
My first performance was in second grade with my friend Rodney Fisher, and we worked up versions of 'Long Tall Texan' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' It gave me a little early confidence that I could actually do this music thing.
Because everybody always encouraged me to sing, I assumed that I wasn't bad at it. It felt like it was obvious what I was going to pursue. I thought I was good for as long as I can remember.
Grandma Holly told me at three years old that I had a voice of an angel, and I just never stopped singing.
My father brought a basketball to the hospital when I was born, and he already had it embedded in his head that I would be a ball player.
I was attracted to cricket at a very young age. My father's elder brother Akram Siddiq saw the passion for cricket in me, so he pushed me, and then another uncle - father of Kamran, Umar, and Adnan Akmal - advised my father to work hard on me, as he thought that I will make it big in cricket.
When I was a kid, my parents encouraged me to take many different classes. Piano was one that I really fell in love with.
I keep a notebook on my bedside table and write poetry every night before I go to sleep. It's been something I've been doing since I was in the second grade, when I was encouraged by my teacher.
I know for a fact the reason I'm an actor is because one, two, maybe three people when I was younger saw something that I did, in youth theater or some small play somewhere, and said, "You're good."
I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it.
My mother and father definitely encouraged me. People used to tell my mom that I should be in commercials, and then everything kicked off from there, and my first gig was some print work.
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.
I was getting rewarded for writing well, from about the age of five or six. A teacher would say, "Look what Andrew has written," and I thought, "Maybe I could be a writer."
A Latin teacher told me I might make a good actress, and that stuck in my memory. I did some modeling, and Polanski gave me that small part.
My grandad and mom would drive me to training all the time, and from then - around seven to eight - coaches were telling me I had something special and needed to stick with it.
Banging on the piano while my grandmother was watching me. I'd run up to her and ask: 'How was that, Grandma?' And she'd say, 'That was beautiful, baby!' And I'd run back to the piano and play some more. I'm sure that's why I still play today, because I was encouraged from such a young age, 2 or 3.
Both my parents recognized early on that I wanted to do something in comedy, and they were really supportive. They're the ones who bought me Steve Martin records and let me watch R-rated comedies long before they probably should have.
