My parents were both opera singers, and they also were both heavily into religious and church music.
I like that 'Pitch Perfect' is one of my first forays into film and just being seen in that kind of light, aside from some people who know me from 'Spring Awakening' or the other things that I've done. I think in so many ways it's kind of like my own 'Glee' or 'Smash'.
I was in choir in school. I kind of just did it. I already knew I wanted to sing. My music program in my school wasn't really great - people didn't really want to be part of the choir, they didn't want to do the plays and stuff like that. It definitely wasn't the cool thing to do.
I am not a trained singer, but I used to sing for my father's theatre troupe and that's where I learnt the ropes of pitch and rhythm.
Before 'Music and Lyrics,' I was just doing high school plays and singing in my church choir and my school choir.
Growing up, just singing in bands, I didn't have the same kind of voice as everyone else.
Me and my three younger siblings, we sang together in grandma's church, and I was in the Chicago Children's Choir in high school, but I didn't think I had the voice to be a singer professionally.
I've studied classical singing, but not to a great extent.
I've been singing forever; I grew up singing in church.
I didn't know I was gonna act. I thought I was gonna be a singer because that's what I did first, and I was like, 'When I grow up, I want to be, you know, a singer.'
When you're a musician and you come from a singing background, specifically one that focused a lot on a cappella music as I have, it's just a real joy to be around so many talented people and talented groups who have a passion for what they do.
My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.
I trained as a singer before I was an actor. I was a kid singer, I went to theater and choir school, and then I got music scholarships throughout my education. And that's what I was going to do. And then I took a left turn and went to drama school and became an actor.
I was more of a dancing kid than a singing kid. I mean, I sang in school choirs and I sang in school musicals, but I was much more interested in dancing than singing.
I've always been singing, and acting was just something that happened.
Well, being from Mississippi, the church house is kind of the common denominator. It was for me growing up. Like so many public performers, that was the first place I was ever invited to sing.
I had a lot of coaching for the movie and no, I have never sung professionally before.
There is a conception about me that I am a playback singer and I sing for albums or for films only, but my roots are in bhajans. Even when I was in school, I used to win competitions for ghazals and bhajans.
I've sung before, first in a band in high school and then in a band in Norway, but never in a musical.
I sang when I was in primary school, and I did singing at Sylvia Young: no acting at all.
Luckily for me, when I was growing up in high school, I had a band, and I was a singer in the band. I'm less of a legit Broadway singer than I am a pop-rock singer.
I had done chorus before in school, but I was only trying for an easy A. I was a bass going 'dum dum da doo wop.'
I was born into a family of gospel singers. My early ambitions were many. I was going to be a ballerina. I almost had that one come true until I tore a tendon, so I transferred from my toes to my throat and that's where the talent settled.
For people who don't know or didn't know that I started off as a singer, singing requires a certain level of drama, in itself. Honestly, it really prepared me to do this, and I've been really blessed to be able to transition into the acting world very smoothly.
One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Whitney Houston, so I was devastated to hear about her passing. I'm from East Orange, New Jersey, and started singing at New Hope Baptist Church, so she was like my fellow Jersey girl.
