I got really into Martin Scorsese as a teenager, so then it was kind of the whole reason I wanted to be an actor. Just like tons of young actors, I think, get freaked out by the Scorsese/DeNiro movies. I loved all his movies in the '90s, too. Then I got a part in 'The Aviator' and couldn't believe it.
I was a pretentious teenager, so of course I had, you know, 'Raging Bull' posters and all of that. 'Raging Bull' is not a pretentious movie, but me having the poster was a pretentious action. I even grew a goatee and had a Knicks cap, because I thought I wanted to be like Spike Lee.
I'm definitely of the 'Harry Potter'-transfigured-me-into-a-reader-and-writer generation. And that's really all I read throughout my teen years, because I really devoted all my time to writing and reading friends' fan-fiction.
There are happy stories out there, but I think some of them may raise false expectations for teens.
I'm still good friends with everybody from 'Teen Wolf.' I still see them, and I go to Jeff Davis' for 'Teen Wolf' night when I can. It was such a rewarding experience. That's such a fun set.
I didn't know what was going to happen with 'Teen Wolf.' I was only scheduled to do four episodes for them, but they kept me on, and I was like, 'Sweet! I'm still employed! That's awesome!' And then, they let me know that they were considering having me for the second half of the season.
I've been singing properly every day since I was about fifteen or sixteen, and I have never had any problems with my voice, ever. I've had a sore throat here and there, had a cold and sung through it, but that day it just went while I was onstage in Paris during a radio show. It was literally like someone had pulled a curtain over it.
Growing up in this post-apartheid era, the first generation of teens in South Africa living in this new democracy, I often found myself feeling different. I was often the only person of color in an otherwise all-white school. And within the Indian community, because of my training with an English acting teacher, my accent was very different.
By the time I was 16, I was someone to reckon with. I was so eager to repudiate any connection with any immigrant race, I would go above and beyond. I was desperate to belong to something. That was my drive as a teenager.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned tradition, it's at that point that I intend to renew it because the present is built on the past just as the past was built on the times that went before it.
