I reached a time in college when I didn't know what I wanted to do. At that time women's careers were essentially nursing secretarial and teaching. My mother advised me to get my teacher's certificate.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people I did not choose acting acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

I think eventually I want to become a teacher like my father wanted to be and hopefully positively influence the next generation.

I was strongly encouraged by a science teacher who took an interest in me and presented me with a key to the laboratory to allow me to work whenever I wanted.

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother.

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 wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college as I was walking across campus one day I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.

I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first I wanted to work in the theatre but there was something about the ambience of film especially American films that always attracted me.

I always wanted to be a teacher.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

My mother wanted to be a teacher when she was young and my father didn't approve of it so she fought very hard to become one. And she did it. So when I said I wanted to become an actress my mother was very supportive. She always said to me 'There's no such thing as 'can't.'

In my teens I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

All I wanted was to be a university teacher.

It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe you see. To be a painter was terrible.

Once I understood Bach's music I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature I just wanted to do something else.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

I wanted to be a teacher.

I wanted to be a teacher but I was a lousy student one of the slowest readers. It was a tremendous struggle. But I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me.

We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number that we did for PBS so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings.

I feel like a hostage to fortune. Not that I am complaining. I wanted to play the role. But in truth I didn't think the show would be such a success. OK I thought it would fail. Not because it was bad. I was confident it was good but plenty of good things just sort of wither on the vine.

I was very clear that I wanted to keep 'Thor' out of the rest of the Marvel universe for no less than the first six issues. And the success of the book I think speaks well to that decision.

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'