Growing up, the dream was to be on Broadway. I always loved theater.

I love rock and opera, and I love musical theater, and I don't want to lose any of that.

I only worked theater jobs, but they were all really silly when I first graduated. I was a line monitor at 'Spamalot,' which means I got there at 8 A.M. and told people how much the tickets were for standing room. I was an NYU Medical School fake patient, to teach doctors how to talk to patients.

I was one of those kids who liked a lot of attention. I was always the kid in class who'd be telling jokes and getting in trouble. Theater was a natural way for me to channel that and also become a productive member of society.

Whether looking at pop music, hip-hop or R&B, it's rare to find an artist who hasn't been touched or affected by the power and soul of gospel music. In fact, many of today's popular artists such as Whitney Houston, John Legend, and Katy Perry started their careers in the church choir.

In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.

Popular music is one endless love song that, I suspect, the basically solitary Ella Fitzgerald approached much as the basically solitary Marianne Moore approached poetry: reading it with a certain contempt for it, Moore said, you could find a place in it for the genuine.

Overall, working with 50 Cent was one of my favourite moments. I grew up, like most of us did, listening to his music and loving him as an artist, so to be able to work with him as an actor was definitely something that was so exciting.