I was raised in the environment where it really wasn't about sittin' around dreaming all the time, it was about practicing and workin' really hard and if a dream ever came to you, you'd be prepared for that opportunity.

I'm not a movie star. People know me, but they don't necessarily know what they know me for. I get recognised, but it's not like Justin Bieber. It's a nice thing, people are cool.

I mean these people who work on Broadway, in my opinion, are the most gifted of everyone. I mean they really know how to dance. They really know how to act. They really know how to sing. They know how to perform.

New Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate.

I don’t really get shaken very much. People could heckle me, a spotlight could go out, I could forget a lyric... I’m not operating on somebody’s brain, you know what I mean? So I just think it’s all funny.

If you think of the public lives of people who've been unlucky, it seems showbiz is some tumultuous crazy world but some are fortunate and some unfortunate. All I can do is keep striving to be better.

There are more than 300,000 families in the Gulf region that lost their homes and are waiting for peace of mind. The hurricane exposed the sad reality of poverty in America. We saw, in all its horrific detail, the vulnerabilities of living in inadequate housing and the heartbreak of losing one's home.