I have been extremely pleased to support the Trust's work in the Lupus Unit ever since. Personal experience also motivated me to become involved to help raise the awareness of the disease and hopefully thereby improve the speed of diagnosis.

If you're a serious actor, you wouldn't put yourself up for one of those shows in case you got bumped off the first week and all your colleagues saw it.

If you are in a play, and you catch a cold, you are able to muddle through. If you are carrying a musical, it's a different thing altogether. It's the great fear of any singer's life.

But you know, I'm not 25 anymore, and I have always said musical theater in particular is a young person's game. It requires energy, mentally and physically, to do it.

I never enjoyed being famous.

Learn to take rejection, keep fit and work only with the best in your field.

"Evita" obviously would always be very special to me because it was the first major musical that I did on stage and created in the U.K. with Hal Prince directing.