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Let me tell you who I am: I'm a girl from New Jersey who moved to New York and worked in a bar while trying to make a living at what I really wanted to do, which was act.

My wife, aside from being amazing in general, was really the catalyst in this, and I really owe a lot of the move to New York to her. She reminded me I've always wanted to do move to New York for theater and said, 'Let's stop talking about it and do it.'

I'm a New York story.

I had been coming to New York, pretty much once a month, to dance on Broadway. I was offered a huge Broadway show but couldn't do it because my brother was having his huge Bar Mitzvah.

Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

I was part of a group called Casanova Fly, doing bouncer work, attending college and working in a pizza shop when I first met producer Sylvia Robinson who came into the pizza shop where I was flipping the dough. I was rapping in the park in Englewood, and she heard about what I was doing.

I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.

I was a waitress years ago when I was first trying to become an actress, waiting tables in New York City.

I was bartending in Boston five, six nights a week, living in my grandmother's condo. By the way, I'm a really good bartender - that's the only skill I can confidently say I have.