Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

My first public impression was my French teacher, Derek Swift.

I had a great drama teacher, and he sort of made out drama school as this incredibly difficult thing to get into: 6,000 people apply every year, and some of the schools only have 12 places. It's a phenomenally difficult thing to get into. And that excited me - I wanted that challenge.

I had a teacher, he was 86 years old and his name was Luigi in New York City, and he said, 'Never stop moving. You get to reinvent yourself.' So you have to find ways to reinventing yourself. Especially today, because it's a whole different market - social media is so important.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.