Hollywood is a very liberal community. There are a lot of guys that are also conservative that are frightened or fearful of being able to come out. And there's also the alternative. I'm one of the few conservatives that are involved with the Creative Coalition. It's trying to propagate the arts in schools and education, and a lot of things I believe in. It's a bipartisan thing, but when there is this strong partisanship... The other thing is, I'm pro-life, that's absolute, but I'm for live and let live. I'm an entertainer, I don't believe in stopping anyone's freedoms of lifestyle.

The music and the message, to me, is something that is imperative and that's what drives me know.

I trained with a guy named Tito Gobbi, who was the Marlon Brando of the opera world. Tito Gobbi was the greatest singing baritone in the opera world and I studied in Florence, Firenze, with him. That was my first love, as it was Frank Sinatra's, oddly enough.

My parents, the effect that [Frank Sinatra] had on the Italian community, in terms of all our friends at the house were multicultural. We weren't just Italians. My dad's close friend was a black gentleman - this was back in the early 50s when Tony Bennett was reprimanded for having lunch, when he was in the military, with a black man.

Quincy [Jones] is one of the greatest world figures, of all-time. I mean he's up there with Muhammad Ali, as far as I'm concerned. His humanitarian work, his contribution to the world and music - he's really an amazing man. Even political divides don't affect his humanity. So, to me, that was extremely meaningful.

I didn't want to become this stiffened - and that was just a personal choice, at that time. And, the idea was also to go to film first, get enough notoriety in film that I could interpret some of the opera stuff the way I would want to interpret it.

Concurrently, while I was in school, while I was winning awards for acting, I was winning awards for singing, in high school. One of the reasons why I decided to continue on with the acting was the opera world is fraught with a very long process, and I did love the acting, as well. The acting took off sooner, and then you get involved with that.