I was doing specialisation in advertising. I had no interest in acting. One of my friends, who was doing specialisation in films, made a short film casting me. Luckily, I got a break, and my acting career took off.
I started out doing the acting, and there was always an interest in music, and then the music just took off.
My first break wasn't professional - I was in 'The Sound of Music' when I was five. I played Gretel, the youngest one, because that was what kind of took off for me in terms of loving acting.
I took acting classes in college, and once I graduated, I decided to give acting a shot when I couldn't really think of anything else to do. It took me a couple of years to get an agent, and my first big break was The Fanelli Boys, which was a sitcom on NBC. Then I did a few television movies.
We [musicians] are comfortable in front of the camera doing music videos, and it's almost a form of acting when we're doing music videos. We're acting out our own thoughts and what we've written down on paper.
I didn't take a break from making music, but I took some time away from the "need to sell it" thing, and moved to my hometown, Umeå. I took my time there, exploring music on my own, on a very personal level.
When I work on a movie, I never aim for records, collections or the number one position. I always concentrate on my work and look for ways to improve my acting abilities. I also advise my co-stars not to concentrate on these pretty issues and just focus on acting.
I don't think I'd want to concentrate on just acting because I love music, and things are going really well, so I think I will always continue to make music.
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
I'm a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it.
I had been acting from a very young age and also performing with a dance troupe, the Kalakshetra Dance Troupe, from city to city. I needed a break. After marriage I took time off. That break lasted 24 years!
My dad is a singer, so it was always either music or acting with me. All the way up through college I was doing both, and even after college I was in a reggae band. Then the acting really started taking off, so the music had to become a hobby.
Acting can be a very reactive profession. Acting is a fantastic thing, and it's my life, but writing is also part of me too, so I did it and in so doing took responsibility for my own life.
Acting can be a very reactive profession. Acting is a fantastic thing, and it's my life, but writing is also part of me too, so I did it, and in so doing, took responsibility for my own life.
When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'
The reason I like doing these acting projects is because no matter how much acting I do, I'll always have music in my life. I love having both.