Tamara Tunie

Living in New York, for me at least, just keeps it very real and keeps my feet firmly planted on the ground.

When I first moved to New York, all I did was musical theater. That's what I studied at Carnegie Mellon University.

I grew up in a funeral home. Both my parents were morticians.

There was a time, actually, when I hadn't been singing, and I'd lost a lot of my ability. My range had shrunk.

Here's how I look at it: Life is full of challenges. Everybody has them. For some, it's health or family crises. I had a financial challenge.

Working on a film is so great because you have the luxury of more time when you're on a movie than when you're on television.

The stage and working in front of a camera are two completely different mediums. Each requires different techniques.

Fortunately, I'm known as the hardest-working woman in showbiz, not to compete with James Brown. I've always been a multi-tasker.

I believe in saying 'yes.' I love to work, and I always believe that the schedule can work out if everything is willing to allow it to work out.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, and regularly, my parents would take us to the Holiday House Supper Club to see acts like Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Ben Vereen, Freda Payne, Stephanie Mills, and The Temptations, to name a few.

I missed singing. I missed performing in a nightclub.

The key is allowing your partner to be who they are and not having expectations that really have nothing to do with the person you married.

I'm always happy and most at home on the stage. I love film and television, but I love live performance... your immediacy with the audience, it makes all the difference in the world.

I've been in this business a long time, and I'm very clear on what is real and what is fleeting.

I wanted to make a home that was similar to the kind of home that my mother made. To be able to create something like that in my adopted city, New York City, one of the toughest cities on the planet, is really special.

I'm a rabid Steelers fan: I'm originally from Pittsburgh. So if the Giants or Pittsburgh are playing, the rest of Sunday is all about food and football.

The first thing I do is brush my teeth - we like to start the morning with fresh breath - and put on my pajamas and meander down to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. No coffee. No caffeine.

I wake up late, say 10 or 11, because we've usually been out and about town until 2 or 3 A.M. listening to music at the jazz clubs or hitting the jazz clubs post-theater.

We sit and read the paper in conjunction with having a little breakfast. Usually fruit salad, or I make myself a smoothie with rice milk, coconut water and yogurt.

I was very good in all the maths and sciences.

I took the whole college prep trajectory, and then in my senior year of high school, I decided that performing was something that I had always done as a kid, and I loved it... I said, 'This makes people happy when I do this, I feel good, I get to pretend and explore other areas and learn so much'.

I grew up in a funeral home, born and raised, and everyone was always like, 'Well, what was that like?' and I was like, 'It was normal', because it's all I knew.

I still enjoy doing the things I've always done, like going to a monthly dance party at a club downtown.

I believe that you can always learn from observation.

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.