I just survived a Disney career without singing. I don't want to, like, fall back in. I feel like I escaped, so if we could avoid it for as long as possible, that would be great.
When I was 12, I read about Iqbal Masih, a child slave who escaped the carpet factory where he'd been chained to a loom since the age of four. Iqbal led an anti-child labor crusade that made global headlines, including the one that first caught my attention.
It was on a trip to Africa with my family - I was eight - and an angry baboon jumped through the window of our parked car. As my siblings escaped, my foot got stuck in the seat. I froze and watched it steal the whole contents of our car around me.
I've sort of escaped my background, as people often do, through art and culture.
Time and time again, our species has escaped existential threats by reinventing ourselves, finding new skills not coded in our genes to survive new challenges not previously encountered.
I just feel lucky that I somehow escaped from the confines of the business class... I feel so fortunate that somehow I managed to break out of that world and get to do something that really had more meaning.
I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.
When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.
I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?
In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.
