Smash hit

Connick and his wife, Jill Goodacre – a former model whom he met at a Los Angeles pool party and has been with for the best part of two decades – now live with their children in Connecticut. His kids have caught the music bug, with his middle daughter, Sarah Kate, showing a particular interest in singing. “I’d be surprised if she didn’t end up sitting across the table from you one day,” he smiles.

Despite moving away, he has kept his links with New Orleans, particularly when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in the summer of 2005. He was in Massachusetts when the news began to emerge: “I couldn’t get in touch with my dad or any of my family, who were right in the middle of it. So I got on a plane and I went down there.” Biblical scenes of mayhem greeted him: “You can’t put words to it, when you see dead people on the street, people having seizures because of the heat, babies dying in mothers’ arms, man. It was disgusting, like a mass exodus, total confusion.”

The experiences triggered his most personal, and darkest musical composition, All These People. “It’s the first time I’ve sung about personal tragedy, and that hurts, man, reliving that every night on stage. I do it to let people know that, yeah, it was really that bad.”

Of particular concern to Connick and his friend, the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, was the number of musicians who were left stranded. Faced with the prospect of New Orleans losing its creative life force, they came up with a solution: the Musicians’ Village, a development that would allow artists to buy affordable homes close to one another, regaining the intimate creative atmosphere that had made the city such a unique musical oasis.

Three years on, most of the houses have been built. Also close to completion is the Ellis Marsalis Music Centre, named after Branford’s father, who had taught Connick as a young man.

As it struggles back to its feet, the city has taught him one thing above all else: to value his individuality. “It’s a place with no inhibition,” he says simply. Just like one of his more unlikely heroes: “I’ve always idolised Freddie Mercury. His whole thing was, ‘I am 100 per cent who I am’. That is so hard to achieve, man.”

Has he achieved it himself? “Yeah, now I have. My mother used to tell me to be a leader. I never knew what she meant, but I’ve realised that she just wanted me to do my own thing. There are people out there that cannot stand me and there are people that think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. Ninety per cent of the people in between have no idea who I am. And that’s fine.”

P. S. I Love You is released on January 4

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010