I think you've got to understand your character and where they're coming from.

I've really had a great career. It's been part fortune and part my own choices that steered my own career into playing the great roles that I've played on stage in Australia and at the National and West End in London and on Broadway.

There are some jobs that you go for because achieving them would take your career in a direction that you would like it to go, but mostly, I want to play the roles and have had the great good fortune and opportunities to play some fantastic roles and been very, very fortunate.

One of the things I have loved so much about the career that I have had is that pretty much every character I have played is diametrically opposite to the one before it.

Sylvia Plath, Rumi, there's a lot of spoken word poets who do a really incredible job putting their spoken work into page poetry - that's what I strive to do.

Any time you're a type, your career's over.

Before I'd even started doing music or having opportunities with my own music, I was studying production and business and stuff anyway. I knew there were so many jobs within the music industry - songwriting or session playing or working at a label - and I was really interested in how it all works.

Balancing my career between two industries has never been an issue. I started with a Telugu film and have a soft corner for the south industry, though I've grown up speaking Hindi. I don't think language can be a barrier when it comes to acting. And, since I come from a theatre background, I'm used to memorizing my lines.