I can be very social, but often, it weighs down on me later that the social thing was a put-on. I feel like my way of dealing with not wanting to go out is, I just don't. I can't bring myself to.
I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.
I like to think of myself as being fashion-conscious without being a slave to fashion.
I've had particularly unpleasant stuff, and it has been reported that I've had death threats. Twitter and Facebook give people who have always been out there a platform from which to hurl abuse, and all I can do is try to block it out and remind myself that tweets are transient and get lost in the ether after a few moments.
Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.
I would describe myself as a practising Catholic. This is only my opinion; others may disagree.
Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.
And they know I didn't hold expectations for them like I do for myself. But I also tell them I'm not going to lower the expectations I do have for them because we're playing Division II.
I took up drama and did so much extracurricular work, like the National Youth Theatre and Guildhall's Saturday school. Acting is where I felt most comfortable and how I wanted to express myself.
The first time I made myself up, I was looking at my reflection in the mirror and it wasn't me looking back. It allowed me to do things I couldn't do as myself. I found out how powerful that was and how much that can mean to an actor.
Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to the U.S. The immigration guys kick the star out of my stardom.
There are parts of me that I keep secret even from myself. I have demons and I'd love to be able to healthily look at the demons and still be a wonderful actor and not feel I need them to create.
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
Actors are not a great breed of people, I don't think. I count myself as something of an exception. I grew up in the theater, and my values were about the work, and not being a star or anything like that. I'm not spoiled in that way, and if I fight for something, it's about the work, not about how big my trailer is.
Although I know it's unfair I reveal myself one mask at a time.
In my mid-twenties, I said to myself: 'I can't perform anymore!' I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't perform for a while, then ended up doing a one-woman show about Gilda Radner having cancer. It was called 'Gilda Defying Gravity,' and I did it on the Lower East Side. It was great; people really came out and supported me.
I do try to be resentful, I really do, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
Usually I like playing other people. I like finding myself through other characters. But when you do cabaret, you are yourself. I think it's the most fun, and I tell you, if somebody had told me that, I would have done it fifteen years earlier than I did.
I would never call myself an expert on geopolitics. I'm not studied in it. But what I do know is what's right and wrong in terms of treatment of people.
I'm starting to think about my life, thinking about where I'm going to be in three years time: who I'm going to be with, where I'm going to be situated myself.
I'm really out of touch with myself emotionally. I've always had a hard time talking about how I feel.
Otherwise, my whole career has just been flinging myself at whatever is most overdue first and letting everything else stack up.
I'll demand of myself and my own government what, in the past, I insisted of others.
The older I've got, the easier I've found it to accept myself. I think I've finally learnt not to beat myself up so much.
Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself.
I don't try to worry about sounding like anybody because I know I have my own tone, my own sound. It's just about being honest in a song and trying to relate myself or how to basically break it down as simple as possible for someone to try to understand it. Not being too deep, not being too shallow at the same time.
I had to learn a lot about myself during the situation with my brain tumor.
The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.
I have always wanted a solo career, deep in the darkest pit of myself, but I didn't dare admit it to myself even. It took me a long time to confront my fears.
I have learned a lot about myself and come to deal with a lot of things that, at first, bothered me.
It's too heart-wrenching doing the solo thing. I throw myself into it and get so excited, and then 2000 people buy it and you're, like, 'Oh. I guess it's not that good after all.'
I was the middle of five children, and we were five very opinionated siblings. That probably pushed me to learn to speak up for myself.
I've done well for myself.
You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too. You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I'm not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can't come back.
One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.
