My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds and she did a few movies and she was really a great singer and when she married my dad and started to have a family she sang at parties.

Everybody even me sometimes had to compromise on something doing things we know to be wrong and this happens doing whatever job in the world. But a singer must have the courage of saying no.

Melanie Fiona is a singer a songwriter she's a super-girl. I can be silly goofy really chilled. She's like your cool chill girlfriend sister-friend. I'm just like everybody else.

It's really hard for actors to cross over and get any respect as a singer and if I could just keep it separate and not use my music in movies it's cool.

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person this singer this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer you have to change that's the way it works.

I'm a car singer in fact sometimes I pretend to take my dog out for a walk and I'll just drive him around and start singin'.

These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.

Like all soul singers I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.