I did see what people were saying about me and I was terrified.

I am scared a lot, from bad situation / security problem / close mind people/ feeling unsafe because of my gender …but really happy that I can paint and I can do something: sharing ideas with people, introducing art, make an open gallery in the street, covering bad memories of war from walls and people’s minds.

I didn’t know that people could be bigoted even as they were smiling at you. It’s hard to understand when you see people saying that they love you, but they’re afraid of you at the same time.

I like digging into these characters that are a lot more complex, and there's a lot that isn't apparent on the surface … In a weird way, you can access all that fear and pain. … Nothing makes me happier than when somebody figures out I was in something, and then they'd seen me in something else, and had no idea it was the same person… Then I feel like I've done my job. … I've always loved finding characters that are not always the most likable ones when you first meet them, and finding a way to make them people that viewers will identify with, even against their better judgment.

All this overt heterosexuality amused me. If only they knew.

I'm always surprised when anything about the band connects. But I love the fact that it's hard for people to understand. We've said before that it's always been a great thing to get certain people to go away thinking, 'Oh dear, she can't play the drums!' 'Fine, if you think it's all a gimmick, go away!' It weeds out people who wouldn't care anyway.

Frankly, I think I might scare [the parties], and that would be a good thing.

For me, the most enjoyable aspect of going out and performing is that I never know how susceptible people will be to my methods.

I don't think there are very many people that will have the experience of sitting in this room, doing a job, and the next thing you know you've been on every television camera around the world, and people are' they're frightened of you. They don't know what to make of you. I think people seemed to believe when they saw me that they might be becoming possessed. That is the look in their eyes. They were frightened of me. And no matter what I said or did, it didn't change. And the fact that it was a job in film, it just never came across. And I really' I wish that things had been different back then, but people couldn't see that it was entertainment.

Being Ricky Martin back then and what I was feeling were not compatible…I was the sex symbol and I needed to dance and I needed to make girls crazy and I couldn't say that I was gay. It was a struggle.

You have to understand what the world was like back then. Being queer was very dangerous, and there was a lot of stigma about it. Even when I was hustling, it took me a long time to realise myself as a gay man. It's hard to accept that some of us, at one time or another, had heterosexual feelings. I certainly did. I emerged very slowly into homosexuality, despite the way I was living.

Having said that, I must now admit that I was still afraid of human beings, and before I could meet even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see frightening things—that was what drew me every night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the bar my drunken, bungling theories of art.

I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.

When people looked at me they couldn't recognize any of the history of me, like, 'Where is she from? What's her ethnicity? Who is she?' I just didn't make sense to anybody.