As a professional football player, I have known perfectly well from the day I started playing that every day I have to fight for my place.
I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own.
Whether you do a play in front of 100 people or a movie that one billion people see, you're still affecting people.
I have an understanding of Queen and the way Freddie Mercury did his harmonies. I know what tablas sound like, because my father played a lot of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
There is no line of demarcation between the amateurs and the pros; everyone is using the same tactics and playing in the same arenas. The only thing that separates them is radio, but the artist doesn't control who goes to radio and who doesn't.
In writing a little tragedy, 'The Gaol Gate,' I made the scenario in three lines, 'He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged.' I wrote that play very quickly.
My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.
My secret vice is Sudoku puzzles. Can't stop playing them. My parents are accountants. I blame them entirely.
A shy kid might look longingly at other kids playing in the schoolyard, afraid and unsure about how to approach them, but an introvert is perfectly content on her own.
The rock star stuff never came up for us. The Band was never attacked by groupies before, during or after any show that we ever played.
When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer.
One of my goals is to play the Olympics in 2016. If you're able to represent your country in the Olympics everyone will understand you as a player and not many people do get to go to the Olympics.
As a child I wanted to be everything from a doctor, lawyer, flight attendant to an IT pro- fessional and could never make up my mind. I figured as an actor I'd get to play all these professions.
The shows are so different from each other, depending on whether I play with my band, Nine Stories, other musicians, an orchestra, only one or two members of my band.
If I'm playing a gig in London, it feels so important. The adrenaline rush here is bigger than anywhere else. I kind of like the pressure that London puts you under.
Every aspect of our lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us.
I don't know how many years I can still play. I have to listen to my body and see how it feels.
I really do not think about 'Oh, right now I have to defend those points and this title.' I just really want to enjoy playing on the court, in front of the fans.
My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me.
You learn fast from others how to be an entertainer as well as a musician; you don't necessarily have to get out there and just play - you can be an entertainer, too.
I'm sure my agents would like me to play leading roles, and I guess I should, but I'm more interested in the character parts. They're more fun, challenging and interesting.
