At an early age I discovered the beauty in pictures in 'Vogue' magazine and Ebony magazine, and I would read 'The New York Times.' I had to make my own world within my world because I was an only child.
My dad taught me to kiteboard when I was 13, and around the same time, I happened to just fall into being an extra on a set and fell in love with acting and making movies.
When I was young, I wanted to be a writer or painter. I was always writing stories, and I excelled at drawing. My teachers encouraged my art work. When I was 9 or 10, I began learning piano and started writing music.
Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school.
My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.
When I was very little, I was sort of consumed by a love for opera. Weirdly enough, I went from being really enthusiastic about construction vehicles at the age of seven to being really passionate about 'La Traviata' by the time I was eight.
When I was very young, I just loved the idea of tapping on stuff, so I was always making a lot of noise.
I've been fascinated by music for as long as I can remember. I was the kid on the playground in the third grade who would tell other kids about Paul Simon or Depeche Mode.
When I was a school kid, I used to read lots of comics. This started me on drawing. I would make my own comics about my teddy bear, whose name happened to be Ted.
I know that I loved music before I loved movies, simply because I didn't see movies as a kid.
Though he had very little Latin beyond "Cave canem," he had, as a young dog, devoured Shakespeare (in a tasty leather binding).
I would sing around the house, and I would always play on things just because instruments were always there, but I didn't show any genius as a child. I wasn't a prodigy or anything like that.
I knew I wanted to act since I was 10, but I didn't actually start acting until I was in high school. My favorite play was 'Lilies of the Field.'
I wanted to be Brooke Shields, and my mother was an aspiring photographer, so I was, of course, the only one who would sit still long enough for her to get things in focus, and I loved doing that.
My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don't know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.
The first 'Saturday Night Live' season I was heavily interested in was the one with Martin Short, Billy Crystal, and Christopher Guest. There was just something about Martin Short in particular. I really related to him and hung on his every word and mannerism, so I started impersonating all of his characters as an 8th grader.
When I was very young, even before I went to what you call elementary school, I used to read and watch Japanese comic books and anime all the time. These were the seeds of my future.
I just loved comedy as a kid and I think at some point, it just occurred to me that you could try it, and I did.
I literally fell into this business. I never came down one day and said, "Atticus' thought of the day...I want to be an actor!" My mom and I would always read story books out loud together and I loved doing character voices and playing with my voice.
Since I was a child, I was yearning to learn about percussion because that's what I loved.
Dance was one of the things that led me to acting even though I say I fell in love with acting fairly early on and its true but around 16 and 17 I got heavily into dance but I think I just came into it too late and I was never going to be really great at it so I let it go and the dance led to more acting classes.
I fell in love with the idea of writing songs when I was a child. I thought I was going to be a journalist at first, but I gradually fell in love with all these great writers like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, who were at the peak of their powers then.
Yeah, I guess for years I wanted to be an artist, and when I was growing up, lots of my family were artists, so I was kind of surrounded by that world. Then acting came along, and I loved it immediately.
I can remember running around at the age of 3, wanting to play golf, cricket and football. I was always active, one way or another, driving my parents mad.
I wasn't into acting when I was a kid. Maybe because I was shy or it didn't occur to me.
