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I wanted the focus to be on my ability as a singer and as an entertainer - not on my private life.

Onstage, you can be anything you want to be. In concert, I might project a different side of myself, but I wouldn't do anything I'd be embarrassed of.

Onstage I do all the stuff I'd never do in real life, like lashing out at people who make me mad or freaking out in a long bank lineup. Performing allows me to fulfill all the sicko fantasies I've ever had.

It was a big step, to go from not talking to people to stepping on to a stage. That's when I felt the most comfortable, because I could do anything I wanted to and say anything I wanted to, even if people didn't laugh.

There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics.

Having a chance to be someone other than yourself and to act out stuff that makes people look at you, like, wow, and that's why I love acting so much.

I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to be onstage. I wanted to do musical theater, and from that I realized I was interested in plays. I never imagined myself on television. I was so lucky to be onstage my whole life.

To really be on stage and not know what you're going to say, and to be able to say something that makes people laugh, or do something that's sort of abstract or off the beaten path and have people connect to it by just putting your ideas together, that really makes me happy.

My intention of making acting a career was about being onstage.

As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.