Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.
I've been lucky enough to do theatre, film, and television for a career. Unless I get offered a job as an astronaut, I won't stray too far from it.
I don't really know Hollywood, but living and shooting in L.A. was very motivating, inspiring. The lights, the extras, their American faces, the energy, the Orpheum Theatre. It was all very inspiring.
Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV.
It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.
The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.
I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.
My interest in theatre started in high school, mostly because my dean forced me to do it. I was creating trouble in the hallways, so he demanded that I do something with my spare time.
I remember seeing 'Hairspray' when I was 15, and it is such a luxury to be able to see a Broadway show, and it is so hard to do if you don't live in New York - plus, it can be expensive to go to the theatre all the time, too.
There were wonderful moments when I was singing for the first time in the Olympia Theatre and I was pregnant with my son, which was very, very strange for a singer.
'The Taming Of The Shrew' is probably the first time I've worked in this country for about ten years, apart from theatre, and it's not for want of trying. It was so fantastic to work in London - it felt really glamorous.
Dianne: Daffs is always taking me to see these listed buildings, and I'm always dragging him to the theatre.
Money's never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it's a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show.
I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.
I always wanted to go into film. I love film. I loved growing up in the theatre, but I always wanted to do film all along. But, I still pursue music separately.
I do like to be creative and I'm very lucky that I've been given different areas in which I'm able to do that - whether it be film or television or theatre or whatever. I'm also still into music and recording.
If you're sixty-something, pushing 70, the chances of you getting a tremendously fascinating part in the movies are very low, as to be almost negligible, or even in television. But in the theatre, there are still things to do, very interesting, very ...
The fantasy genre is so in at the moment. Viewers want to escape from their lives and watch something that is so separate from their everyday existence. People have always wanted to escape their lives - that's why they go to movies and the theatre.
Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.
Karen Richards: Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.
[at the theatre] Tony: What the bloody hell are you doing here? Michael (Aged 25): I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
