I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.
Diane Cilento
I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.
My father said, If you want to do acting, you have to be successful, which is a silly thing to say.
I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.
Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.
The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.
If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.
It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.
Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.
At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.
The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne'er do well, who they'd have to keep worrying about.
When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.
My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.
You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.
Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.
Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.
If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.
If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.
I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.
I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.
I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.
I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.
I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.
I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.
I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.
I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive.
Blank House was exactly a nice empty sheet where nothing was accountable because you were so naughty that you were in Blank House.
