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I was a huge show-choir girl!

To be a famously successful opera singer. I wanted that since I was eight.

My singing voice had rescued me from the scene I was in at school - I was an unpopular, bookish kid who had an indeterminate ethnic background. I became fascinated with women sopranos because they had a future that I didn't as a singer.

I was always a show girl. My parents were wonderful. There wasn't a lot going on where we lived, but they ferried me to classes and competitions all over the place. When I was 12, I came to London as a finalist in a singing competition and I was completely wide-eyed.

I started singing in pubs and clubs around Belfast when I was 10. My dad is a musician, and he took me 'round; I impersonated Tina Turner and Shirley Bassey, and the crowd couldn't believe what was coming out of this little girl.

I studied at Guildhall and did the acting course, but because I could sing a bit, I kept being cast in musicals.

I started singing at the Met when I was seven, and the competition was so fierce that it really prepared me.

I remember at the age of, and I'll say this, 10 and a half, 11, I had a natural boy soprano.

I became an actor when I was 22.

I was the teenage kid growing up in New Jersey watching the Tony Awards and thinking, 'Oh, maybe if I'm lucky I'll make it to Broadway by the time I'm 40!'