There is a thing where I get scared watching other people, and really realize, My God, their happy lives are going to stop. Sometimes you feel that people have 19 jokers in their back pocket and, because of the way they're living, you're like, Do you know that this is not going to happen over and over again forever?

The whole point of art school is that you're going to be able to have nudes all day long and a teacher who is there to move you. It's great.

I always loved singing, but I thought it was like drawing - just something you do in your own little corner to calm yourself down. But when my friend, the French songwriter Etienne Daho, listened to my songs, he was so moved that told me that I had to do a demo, share them with the world.

Luckily, I was raised by a kind of gypsy family, which is why I always get along better with people who worked in circuses than with kids of other actors. My mom was so carefree with us in a beautiful way. We were used to sleeping anywhere.

I try to not listen to all the girls I admire musically - like Nina Simone - just so I don't find myself imitating them, even if it's subconsciously.

In England you laugh at yourselves, in France we laugh at others.

Music, for the moment, has been this hidden thing for me. For the first time, I am master of something. I am not used by someone else, like in movies or pictures, where you always have the happiness or disappointment of knowing it's you seen through someone else's point of view. You go to see a film and half of the pretty scenes are not in it-the ones you liked. Living with this frustration all the time, suddenly music came as the best thing for me at home, where no one can tell you anything.