My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.

I'm a big fan of live music and going to gigs, but I'll leave it to the professionals.

You immediately hear the word 'Merlin,' you think magic, you think adventure, excitement - you also think 'an old man.'

You look for comic relief in difficult times.

When you're a kid, you learn whatever your parents think until you start taking in media. Because all your friends are your age as well, media is the third parent that you ever have. So I think about that a lot, what visual imagery is teaching us, and media in general having a huge impact.

As an urban school superintendent, I learned that hiring, training, and investing in professionals to support our children's social and emotional development, meeting academic expectations for students with special needs, and finding more minutes of instruction in the week, not fewer, mattered.

It takes several doses of any veg before children like it, but once they do they'll like it for life. You wouldn't give up on a child who didn't want to learn to read. Learning to eat is every bit as important.

From the beginning of puberty, I did really badly in school. I was super dyslexic; I was in special ed. I had a hard time reading and writing, so I thought that my self worth was in my looks, how I presented myself, and how other people perceived me.