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My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

I'd been kind of a hiccup in my parents' lives. They lost track of me and I didn't know what I was going to do with myself. And then fate reached in and took me in its hands. I was discovered right out of high school and started getting work.

When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, it was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. Not because it was highfalutin' in any way - just because they didn't know anybody in that field. They were anxious of a profession they knew nothing about.

What upset me the most was not that I would die, but that I was letting down my parents. I felt very guilty for chasing this dream career of mine, at the expense of my parents.

I wanted to be involved in music and I felt I needed to get in quick. I didn't want to spend four years in college and then hope for the best. I gave myself a year, which is why I kept pushing people for a chance. I literally felt my whole life was in the balance. Music was my life, and I was scared of having time pass by and missing my chance.

My parents instilled in me that life was going to be very difficult and that I'd have to work for everything.

My mother was working on her college degree throughout my childhood, and being the youngest in the family, that meant being dragged to a lot of her classes. She majored in playwriting, so I was exposed to theatre from a very young age, and it was just the most magical world to me. I never really wanted to do anything else.

When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.

If they would have told me when I was just 18 that I was going to have a career that would last so long, I'd have said it was impossible, that it was crazy that that could happen in my life, so I'm happy to be here. To be able to go out on stage every day.

Being onstage and communicating with an audience was part of my life since I was very little, but I was never pushed into singing. My parents were so uninterested in me making music.