I'm in my father's car at age 9 or 10 crying to Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat,' thinking that you could write nearly a love letter to a man who betrayed you by having an affair with your wife. I was thinking how wonderful and pure music can be for explaining situations.

It's true that the biggest value of life is that it's going to stop. I was thinking when I was in New York the last time that all that we see that has importance is man-made. It isn't nature-made. And when I was looking through the window, looking at New York, I was so moved by humanity's desire for immortality-because that's what it is.

It took me so long to get to the music, where that was what I wanted to do all my life. It took me so long to realise that it wasn't really movies that I wanted to do, but to be on stage singing.

I was such a tomboy. I had absolutely no bosom, and I wore my hair really short - shaved, like a boy.

I was raised by muses. Women who had men in awe of them and who wrote them movies and wrote them music.

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.

Singing is the rawest thing. Having been naked in films or naked in photo shoots, it's nothing compared to singing. It's absolute nakedness. You are stripped bare! It's very strange. Acting seems much easier, in fact, because you are putting on a costume - whereas here you are taking everything off.