There are many mediocre entertainers who don't aspire to much more than fame and glory. It's very easy to have them as your role models because there aren't as many greats.

Coretta Scott King was all about her pearl earrings. At one point, I'm wearing pearl earrings the size of golf balls. They're enormous! She was bold-she knew that she was the Jackie Kennedy of her community.

Success for me will be where the body of work I've done afforded me the opportunity to be as good as I can be, and to explore myself and to see what I'm capable of. People like that share a willingness to be scared and to take chances.

I'm guessing that musicals didn't make sense anymore because of the changes in the political environment that began in the late Sixties, an era of self-awareness and social revolutions.

You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist.

There are many mediocre entertainers who don't aspire to much more than fame and glory. It's very easy to have them as your role models because there aren't as many greats.

At the end of the day, I really go with my personal taste and with what's on the page in terms of character. But beyond that, there's a complexity about the scripts I tend to respond to. I've not lost my curiosity about how the world functions. And a script that can embody that and thematically explore bigger questions in a way which seems fresh is likely to get my attention. Frankly, I also have an eye for what will appeal to an audience, as opposed to a self-indulgent exercise that isn't taking the audience into account.