I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.

I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.

My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

Accents are very tangible, blessedly, and if you have to do one, it's a way of getting into character. I can read it through a few times and pretend I know what I'm doing!

I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.

When it comes down to helping kids, a lot of ways for education to move forward is through music because that's exciting to kids. Reading books and going to a bookstore is not that exciting.

My father was the first entrepreneur in the family. He started his own record label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the people, he had to create.

My goal simply was to have an impact, to try to make a contribution and help the team win. I wasn't thinking, 'I want to play well, so I start the next game.' But every kid's dream is to play in the World Cup. Watching at home with your parents when you're 10 years old, you never think you'll be there in the future.