I didn't have any role models. I really thought I was doomed to this loveless, lonely life. I didn't know any gay people until I began doing theater.

Some actors have to make a choice. If they have the opportunity to become these huge megastars, making millions and millions of dollars and have to live a lie, that's a choice they have to make. Not that I would ever be a big star, but I just had to live my life the way I saw fit.

People are easily intimidated when they decorate their home. They think it has to be one way. But there's no one way. It's your way, your style. At the end of the day, you have to live there. It's your cocoon, your nest. You have to be happy in it.

In the dining room, next to my collection of colorful papier-mache Mardi Gras float art, hang draperies made of the New Orleans toile fabric that I designed pre-Katrina for Hazelnut.

Did Anthony Hopkins really have to be a serial killer to be in 'Silence of the Lambs?,' I don't think so, no. It's called acting, people.

Labels don't really impress, it's the uniqueness and risk in decor that inspire.

I tend to wake up in the middle of the night with ideas crying to be documented.