"It was much more than a role in a movie.
It was exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. And it was the farthest I've ever had to push myself creatively. At every level, I had a great education. What drew me to the role from the beginning was the story of this remarkable woman. Where she came from, how she came up in the world, the incredible amount of influence she had over an entire country and the impact she had on the whole world... truth really is stranger than fiction."

"I think that we're both courageous. We're both fighters and determined and hard-working. I think we're both terribly misunderstood, envied. I think that because I lost my mother at a young age and that Eva grew up without a father there's a certain kind of sadness that I can relate to that she had, growing up without a parent."

"I think I probably had more of a formal education than she did. And let's face it, things are a lot easier for women where I come from at the time that I grew up than they were for her. She had many more odds against her. And I think, for the most part, the changes she brought about in Argentina were in the name of her husband, and the imperialist regime, whereas I don't stand for any particular government or political party."

"I think previous portrayals of Eva Perón have been rather one-dimensional. She's always been painted as a power-hungry girl from the sticks who rose to power and took full advantage of her position before she died. It's a very connect-the-dots version and never seemed to reach the real human being behind the myth. Which is what I wanted to do in the movie."

"There have been lots of different versions of this play with cast recordings by everyone from Patti LuPone to Elaine Page to Julie Covington. All of whom are sopranos and sing in a whole different range than I do. So I really didn't have that much to guide me musically going in. On top of that, Andrew Lloyd Webber's score is very difficult and demanding. So the first step was to work on singing in upper registers and to develop a wider range for my voice.
Eventually, we did lower the keys on a couple of songs, but for the most part we kept them up where they had originally been written."

"I think that in putting a stage production on film, you have to be careful to keep the music and singing from overpowering the audience. You can very easily get into screeching the songs, and what I was most concerned with was making Evita less of a bully and more of a human being. Because the entire movie is sung instead of spoken, it has an operatic quality, which implies an over-the-top delivery. I was going after something much more naturalistic. As the story is sung, we wanted to make sure every word could be understood."

"But beyond that, it was important that audiences could enjoy the musical experience, which meant that we had to make an intimate, emotional connection at the same time that we were acting and trying to hit our notes. It was an experience that I think has had a real impact on the other aspects of my singing. In the course of training I wrote 'One More Chance' and 'You'll See,' and if you listen to those songs, you can hear how I was trying to absorb and utilize what I was learning."

"I was delighted to be working with Alan for a number of reasons. First, he's steeped in the movie music genre, from his first film, Bugsy Malone, through projects like Fame, The Commitments, and Pink Floyd: The Wall. He understands the art form better than any other director I know.
But he's also got a great dramatic sense.
Movies like Mississippi Burning and Midnight Express were very intriguing political dramas and there's an element of that, of course, in Evita. He also has a wonderful visual style and a way of getting great performances from his actors."

"There are songs that you can separate out from the score that stand on their own, but the biggest challenge was bringing meaning and life to the whole piece. A lot of it we sang with the orchestra in the studio and some we would sing live on the set, especially the scenes that required real emotional interplay. We needed to be together, and not in a studio isolation booth, to make those moments ring true. A lot of times, in the sheer truth of the moment, I felt like we were really connecting. But there were plenty of other times when I'd say to myself, 'What are we doing? What is this? It's not an opera, it's not a musical, it's not even a regular movie. It's just . . . insane!' Because Alan had a rule that we weren't allowed to see the dailies, sometimes I had nothing more to go on than my own inner sense that I had to keep moving forward."

"Time will tell, but I can say that after going through it all... everything from trying to sing a whole new way, to learning how to tango, to meeting presidents and bishops to every other detail that needed my full attention, I'm 100% sure no one else could have handled the role".