Singing was my first love and I never even considered it after I started acting, but now I'm bringing it back into my life. I trained from the ages of 11 to 17. When I moved to New York and got into serious acting, I just kind of abandoned the whole singing thing. But when I grew up in Pennsylvania I went to voice lessons once a week.
It Might As Well Be Spring... I used to sing that as a young girl in my voice lessons. Then I picked it up again and it spoke to me in a whole new way.
If I can iron out my accent, it opens up another world of possible jobs. Whereas if you have that very strong European accent, it leaves you always being cast as the Hungarian maid or the stripper or whatever. I have voice lessons, and my coach has given me different tongue-twisters to rehearse at home.
In high school, I started training, singing with choirs, and getting voice lessons and doing a lot of creative writing and decided that that's really what I wanted to pursue as a career, and that's what I was going to study.
I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.
When I first started out, being from the South and going to New York or Chicago, people kept telling me to get voice lessons and 'lose that stupid accent you got.' And I'm like, 'Well, where I come from, you have the stupid accent.'
I never really sang for anyone, apart from in the shower or with my best friend. I was shy. I didn't want to take voice lessons. I knew I could sing, but I just didn't tell anyone.
I went to school to learn guitar, solfeggio, and harmony. I wanted to know more about music, how it works. I wanted to take voice lessons, too, and that's when I discovered what I could do with my voice. At the beginning, I thought I would do classical and pop, but then I learned that I really liked the classical music.