Well I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

I started running around my 30th birthday. I wanted to lose weight I didn't anticipate the serenity. Being in motion suddenly my body was busy and so my head could work out some issues I had swept under a carpet of wine and cheese. Good therapy that's a good run.

I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest but when they told me I could never have sex not even on my birthday I changed my mind.

I was in the bath at the time and my dad came running in and said 'Guess who they want to play Harry Potter!?' and I started to cry. It was probably the best moment of my life.

I was always anti-marriage. I didn't understand monogamy. I couldn't figure out how that could last. And then I met Bryn and I started to understand the beauty of constancy and history and change and going on the roller coaster with someone - of having a partner in life.

When I tried to play something and screwed up I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

I'm just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

I came on to the film with a very happy-go-lucky attitude which I think my character Charlie did when she went into the house. I expected it to be good and then slowly things started to change for us all.

As I wrote I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older soft-spoken and she started showing some attitude.

In the late '70s maybe just before I started there was still an attitude that if you did film you didn't do TV and vice versa but that's gone now.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world but some films just don't work.

On 'Van Halen ' I was a young punk and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning ' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

Smiles come naturally to me but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command. I studied all the time. I looked at magazines I'd practice in front of the mirror and I'd ask photographers about the best angles. I can now pull out a smile at will.

My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents they focused on education but did not stop at academics - they made sure that we knew music saw art and theatre and traveled - even though it meant budgeting like crazy.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'

At the University of Maryland my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design stage design or television design.

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and whilst abroad underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.