Well, my great lesson with that was I went to the same production twice - once completely high and once completely sober - and both times were equally wonderful.

My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars - not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road - and we were roped in.

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.

Arguably, the relationship between Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland is one of the great mother-daughter sagas of all time. Certainly, for certain people, and a lot of them, Liza is the bigger star. Liza is the more kind of viable legend, shall we say. Then there's the other camp, where Judy is the one.

I love being not cool.

The more hedonistic you were, the better...I very much subscribed to that as a young artist.

What I love about my daughter is that she is going to definitely allow me and force me to change my life and slow down and make it more about the real things in the world.