I had a little bit of a vocal strain at a certain period of time that made me lay off the singing, and while I was lying off the singing, I was pursuing the acting.

I had a different upbringing - my dad worked three jobs. You know, it wasn't as easy as they had it.

I had always been affected by films, as well, of course - and great films.

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

The [Frank] Sinatra interpretation of the music, as opposed to some other music that you were listening to - where you felt like they were singing at you - you felt Sinatra was singing to you. It's a very intimate art form, and that's what I responded to - the intimacy of his performance.

Here I was in Estonia, doing a concert for 5,000 people, and not many people know the song My Way - Gorbachev in the 80s, My Way had just become a famous song, and [Mikhail] Gorbachev in a satirical, kind of cynical manner coined the term the Sinatra Doctrine and My Way was the song because the Baltic states in the Warsaw Pact wanted to go their own way and secede from the Soviet Union, so joking he says," Yeah, we've got the Sinatra Doctrine now."

I had a little bit of a vocal strain at a certain period of time that made me lay off the singing, and while I was lying off the singing, I was pursuing the acting.