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I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.

I love going into a country and just blending.

Country has been a wonderful outlet for me.

I'm a big fan of country.

What I loved about country music when I was a kid was the Grand Ole Opry, was 'Hee Haw,' was 360 degrees of entertainment.

I barely knew I wanted to be an artist. I liked my art classes and painting was fun, I guess, but I didn't realize that seeing the country was going to inspire me to further explore that... but that's what it did.

A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.

Once I was in the city, I really enjoyed it. Just to experience things. There was so much new stuff.

It's lovely being a producer. It's really a lot of fun and I can learn a lot.

I've spent months living in Africa and India. So it's not like I was sheltered when I started living in America. But my family laughed when they heard I was going to be in 'Transformers.' I learned a lot and got to experience Michael Bay's mayhem. It was a very colorful experience.