I would love to have a number one hit. The truth is if I don't get one, I'll be fine, but at the same time, the truth is that I'm dying for one, as well. But it's worth a shot, I think, while I still have cheekbones.

Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do - unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally.

I am undefinable. I don't fit into any particular category.

I have earned hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I can't seem to get to grips with money.

I'm very much a romantic. I'm highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We're not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.

I was keenly aware that I didn't want to draw on too many typically doomed aspects of the fated singer. Whether it's Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, there is this tragic quality to older women that one can revel in, and you want it to be more three-dimensional than that. So it was important for the character to be strong and resilient, because there are so many victims in opera.

Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.