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There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.

I did do a local musical, 'Bubblin' Brown Sugar.' I played the young Sweet Georgia Brown. I was 13 years old. After that, I just decided that I had to pick one thing, acting or singing, and concentrate on that.

I want to show people all of me, because that's what I haven't been doing. To be able to play so many instruments, and no one's ever seen me play, it seems like someone who's bluffing.

I saw 'Hairspray' at the Pantages in L.A. It came to the Pantages right before I did the movie, and just being in New York sometimes and seeing the marquees and everything like that, I'm like, 'I really, really have to go experience a Broadway play.'

I liked to play dress-up.

I was always in plays at school and in school concerts - you could say I liked to show off.

My favourite pastime used to be sitting on a park bench watching people. But after 'Jagged Little Pill,' the eyeballs turned, and I was the watched one.

If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.

I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.

Film and TV and stuff like that was something that I wanted to do when I was really, really little; like, I remember I used to do these plays with my cousins. We used to do Michael Jackson performances, and I would be Michael.