As a kid, growing up, as far as I was concerned, I was Luke Skywalker. Any sort of small victory or any adversity I would come up against at school, I was like, 'How would Luke Skywalker deal with this?' Everybody was the Empire; anybody who bullied me at school was the Empire.

I've become really aware since putting out music that some people can't get past the acting thing. But acting was never what I meant to do.

I was a very anxious kid. I was bullied at primary school and responded by making myself as anonymous as possible at secondary school.

Bristol is known for having quite a good success rate of music - Massive Attack and Portishead, that drum and bass, dance music scene. I never listened to that stuff when I was a kid, but my parents did, and my parents knew some of those people.

I'm from California, but my father, who passed away when I was young, was from Newark. When I was kid, we would go back east and catch Yankees games. His side of the family are big Yankees fans. But, the real connection came in '97 when I moved to New York and became friends with the team.

When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.

I wasn't that over-the-top, but I got sent to the principal in first grade for talking. And my father was for a long time the president of the Board of Education. That was always a hard note to bring home.

I didn't go to the right schools, didn't come from a well-known family, nor was I even remotely connected to a powerful publishing dynasty.