When I was younger, I did my first audition at 'Eurovision.' I was about 17. After my first audition, I blacked out; I was just like, 'I can't do this.' I'm not knocking it or anything - it's been around for years. I'm just very, very happy I made that decision myself. I think that's one of the best decisions I've ever made.
For me to call myself a musician, it's necessary to play live, and it rewards so much - not just in the pay cheque sense but what it does for my playing. I feel it through a tour - I feel it at the end of a tour - all that I've gathered, and especially now that I am improvising so much.
Menshn is a play on the word mention, and in the U.S. that's how it'll be perceived. Like Tumblr or Flickr. People in the U.K. thought that I'd named it after myself.
I can be myself everywhere and be happy and confident and not feel that I am just what I do.
I can't distract myself enough here, for sketches to a new opera are constantly buzzing around in my head, to the extent that I need all my strength to wrest myself from them.
I've been building a future for myself outside of acting.
I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.
In '98, I locked myself in my house, went out of my mind and wrote 25 songs. I rarely bathed during that period of writing, I sent out for food, I didn't really venture out of my house in three or four months. It was a hell of an experience.
I style myself and choose what to wear based on what I feel good in it.
Psychologically, I'll always be a fat girl because that's what my character is built on. I always got a buzz out of people telling me I was ugly. I went out of my way to un-beautify myself. I didn't want anyone's approval.
I don't see myself as being a heart-throb at all.
I've never had to compromise myself for a job, ever.
I think if I ever stopped pushing myself, I would revert quickly to quite repetitive, restrictive behaviour. But in pushing myself and concentrating on what I can do, I think I can contribute to society. And that gives me the desire to keep pushing, to see what I'm capable of. The thing to do is not to stop.
The way I work is I like to immerse myself in the world of the film and in the character's lives, and then from that, I get a lot of ideas of how the film could be made, how it could be told.
I see society as something dangerous, and you have to save yourself from the rules. I think acting is the way I save myself.
I always believe that one can't interfere in another's work. Once I start work on any film, I surrender myself completely and blindly follow the director.
When my son was growing up, I was always guilty, no matter what I did. Make decisions and be happy with the decisions you've made. I tell myself, in the long run, it's the love, the quality of relationships that you have with your family, your friends and giving back to the community that matters.
The question I ask myself is what would have happened if newspapers hadn't initially given their content away for free on the Internet. It's so hard to get people to pay once they are accustomed to having something for free.
I think being on 'Glee' is such a great experience, but I think the best part was when I did 'All By Myself', because I love that song.
It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.
I used to get out of bed sometimes and feel depressed and watched a lot of reruns on TV to get over it. I should have allowed myself to be a little more human and not worry about trying to be a superwoman.
I've always said that if I couldn't be myself, first I'd want to be Eminem and then a Disney kid.
At the age of two-and-a-half, I was run down by a truck. I had gone rogue in the house while my mother was bathing my sister. I went outside and met a friend who promised me candy. Afterward, I walked back by myself across the road where I fell down in the street. A 15-year-old boy delivering bread struck me down.
Well, I really don't like heights. I don't get on the top deck of a double-decker because that's a bit high for me. I always feel that I'm going to hurl myself off, so heights are a problem.
As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.
I don't play music very well, so I've always surrounded myself with people who played a lot better than I did. I'm a loyal person, and I just tend to leave it to the experts.
Every two weeks, I'd get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
I think the one thing about me is I'm a fairly demanding guy, and I give a great deal of myself, and I expect that in return.
I'm really lucky because I found myself in a position where I can do whatever I want to do. I can make records, produce records, make movies, or I can do nothing. I'm not a slave to the dollar.
I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I'm quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.
I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives.
When I told the fans I was an alcoholic, they all applauded. When I told them I had given myself to a higher power, they cheered again.
I'm a lesbian. Yup. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I remember being in college, and I had fallen in love with this woman, and I remember sitting in my dorm room saying out loud to myself, like, 'You have enough problems. You are not gonna let this happen.' You just kinda, like, stuff it away until - well, some people stuff it away forever.
I would make a few jabs at myself and go for the audience - they are still as flawed as ever.
For me, acting is like a therapy. I can express myself fully when I am acting and have blood in my veins. Even when I'm not working, I'm always living in my own world, imagining characters.
I keep myself flexible; I just compete at my normal body weight.
