I had no interest in being an actress what so ever, and when I was about 14 or 15, I was signed to a company in England. They owned a children's TV show which they put me in as a singer, and I was on the show for three years, and I left the show when I was 18 and started looking for a record contract.

Ballyhoo is for your classic girl, who is fun and fearless. This is for the girl who is not afraid to dress fun.

You're a smaller fish in the U.S. There's just so many more TV shows, and actors, and actresses. Where as in the U.K. you're in a much smaller market there.

I'm a big fan of people like Rachel Bilson and Kate Bosworth. I think they're so chic and have this cool edgy-rocker feel. For about a month I tried to do that, but what I realized is that I can't be anything other than what I am.

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.

Born in England during the First World War, of Belgian parents with partly German roots, I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Antwerp, where I had the benefit of a classical education taught in the two national languages of Belgium: French and Dutch.

I was very shy and I was very introverted as a kid, but whenever I set foot on stage, I kind of opened up, and I think a lot of kids need an outlet to express their creativity. And a lot of kids are scared to do that if there's not a safe environment for that.