ALL MY CHILDREN

Sabine Singh (Greenlee) 
New York University
New York, NY
Major: Drama (class of 1997)

You got your degree from NYU, but that’s not where you started out, correct?
“Right. I’ve basically been to every school in America – and if I didn’t physically go there, I probably got them to give me credit [laughs].”

Where did you start out and why?
“I wanted to go as far away as possible, and for an 18-year old girl in Suffern, NY, that was the University of Michigan. I was shocked when I got in because it’s a really good school; maybe they had to fill an Indian/German quota, I don’t know. I entered their BFA program and everything that could possibly happen to a person their freshman year happened to me.”

Like what?
“I arrived with a tickle in my throat that turned out to be bronchial pneumonia. I couldn’t move into my dorm because I was so sick, so I lived in a hotel room with my mother – while rushing sororities and making all the sorority princesses sick! I had a stalker, a man I’d met right after orientation, and I was put under police protection. I gained, like, 45 pounds and had no energy… When I went home, my pediatrician ran a test and it turned out I had Lyme disease.”

Wow. You weren’t kidding!
“They wanted to hospitalize me, but I had applied to Oxford [University] and gotten in, so I literally packed an entire suitcase of antibiotics and went to England. I was taking 25 pills a day and studying Shakespeare. I decided to stay in London to go to the British Drama Academy [BADA], but to get credit, I had to apply to Bennington [College]. I got in and did their abroad program at BADA, and UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles] gave me credit for Oxford. So after my year at BADA, I applied to NYU, brought my Michigan, UCLA and Bennington via BADA and Oxford credits with me, started as a junior and finished my BFA in 1997.”

So all in all, a pretty typical college experience.
“Yes, I’d say so [laughs].”

CAPTION:
High Honors: “Me [r.] with my acting teacher in London, Claire Davidson – the most inspirational acting teacher I ever worked with.”

CAPTION:
A Loft Touch: “I shared this room at Michigan with Julie Kashen. She used to say that Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were roommates at Harvard, which was important because she was going to have a political career and I was going to be an actress.” (Kashen is now the Deputy Policy Director for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.)

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