I've dreamt of being in a movie musical for a long time. For some reason I never even thought 'Les Mis' would be possible.

But in another world, another life, probably growing up in another country, I might have been more of a dancer.

Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that - we probably had the word 'cappuccino' about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard, but we take our leisure time seriously.

Instead of setting goals, seek defining moments. Those are the real tests, because you have to be willing to fail in a pressure situation in front of other people.

The activity of being a husband, a father - those are roles, too, but underneath them is the spiritual center that connects us all, and that's what's most important.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down - of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' - that galvanizes me more than anything.

I'm doing a new musical on Broadway, which opens in October called The Boy from Oz, where I play Peter Allen. For those of you who don't know, he became first famous in America for marrying Liza Minelli.