My Saturday

Harry Connick Jr on tough gym sessions and scary movies

6.30am I’m a morning person, so I wake up naturally quite early. 7am I work out for 30 minutes every day at home in Connecticut; sometimes I do kettlebells .Idon’t like to eat before noon – I’m an intermittent faster, otherwise I really go to extremes. I can eat a whole pizza or eight doughnuts, it’s like I don’t have an off switch.

I don’t drink at all, either. 8am While the rest of the house is asleep, I’ll sit and write [songs and scripts] for two hours. 10am My wife Jill and the girls [Georgia, 23, Kate, 22, and Charlotte, 17 ] get up and Jill will make me a latte, using our Nespresso machine and oat milk. Midday Jill and I go to a local joint, Rosie, in New Canaan. It’s got a tin roof and serves really good oatmeal. 1pm My kids are pretty athletic so I’ll go to a workout class with them, like Orangetheory [interval training]. It’s tough but I just like hanging out with them.

2pm Back at home, I’ll make myself a smoothie using protein powder and frozen fruit. I then write for three hours in my downstairs studio. My setup is pretty basic: a laptop connected to a widescreen monitor, with some speakers either side, and a mini keyboard. 5pm Jill loves to walk, so we take our two dogs to Irwin Park, not far from our house. Lucy, our shih-tzu, is 12, and Tuka, a rescued mixed breed, is two. Tuka basically looks like Toto from The Wizard

of O z. 6.30pm Jill’s a much better cook than I am – she isn’t intimidated by recipes and loves [Barefoot Contessa] Ina Garten’s cookbooks. She makes this Asian salmon with ginger, soy and steamed broccoli that tastes unbelievable.

8.30pm I watch a film with the girls. We love modern horror, whereas Jill hates it, so it’s impossible to get her to join us. We recently watched We Are What We Are, about a cultish family with questionable practices, and laughed through it. 11pm

I go to bed early. I’m directing Harry Connick Jr – A Celebration of Cole Porter [for which he also wrote the script], which opens on Broadway in December, and there are a few beats that I have to sort out; I’ll close my eyes and try to work through it.