Nobody would ever think, "Oh, get into acting so you can live the straight and narrow path," but it gave me a sense of discipline and focus.
Sometimes I can be on a cloud and then two hours later feel really small.
I can write a song in the back of the bus, where I am right now, or in my living room, and I can perform it that night and have an instant reciprocal exchange - an emotional, impactful exchange - and it's a less technical medium. It's a pure expression from my soul to other souls.
In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.
Fame can be just so annoying because people are so critical of you. You can't just say "hi". You say hi and people whisper "Man, did you see the way she said Hi. What an attitude."
Success is a nice by-product but what I really want is work.
My dad kept me away from people who treat children wrong. It's just amazing that there is such a way to raise a person without giving them complexes. But nobody does it. They think it should be the old school. But look at the products. Wouldn't it be great if you could avoid the complexes? Then you could deal with the complexes of life.
Because I'm not perfect looking, I get to play better roles.
I don't make an effort to be sloppy. I just don't consider a perfect hairdo and a perfect face to be beautiful. If I had my way I'd dress myself and do my own makeup for magazine shoots.
I made a joke with my sister... I said, "I don't know what's more nerve-wracking, job insecurity or job security." There's opportunities and things you compromise with both. When I had endless freedom of schedule, or when I commit to a movie for two months, then I could manage my music and go on the road.
I like people like Tina Turner, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, and Stevie Nicks; you only hear that person in their voice, they sound like nobody else.
When I first started, I wrote some songs with Linda Perry. She's so instrumental in a lot of artist's lives, listening to you and then helping you write songs that are you, that bring the most of what you are out, whereas a lot of producers might put their stamp on you. I gained confidence because I'm less of a straight-up, traditional vocalist.
When I do a film, usually I work from my director. That's my boss. The director is interpreting the writer's vision, and we all interpret it, and they create their own vision as well.
My main objective was finding my individuality as a vocalist.
As actors, we want to go find the humanity and make it more nuanced and fill in the colors, rather than just being suit people who crack cases, 'cause they aren't that.
The old footage of my dad, I always knew we were cut from the same cloth, because my dad was such a renegade and always marched to the beat of his own drum. To see where we were both dancing and being silly together, it's too beautiful for words. I was really happy to have that.
I think early on I avoided singing because it was so personal and I didn't know how to sit in that intimacy. I wrote songs when I was little and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.
Being wild can be wearing a silly hat. Being wild can be dancing weird. Being wild can be shooting people. What do I think being wild is? Nothing. Actually, the whole world is wild. Everything is wild.
With movies and TV, storytelling, it's a different medium. I really love it, but I'm one part of many, many pieces of that puzzle and a lot of it is out of my control.
I'm less of a straight-up, traditional vocalist.
I was like twelve or something, when you first kiss a guy and you see the way the guy reacts, how they get really excited, or whatever. And I'm perceptive, so I think, "Ah, jeez, is that something that I'm able to do?"
As early as when I was five or six I wanted to perform.
I collect clothes-they keep building and building. I buy them instead of having them washed.
I don't want to be famous as a movie star and have the whole world love me, I want to be a creative actress.
