What personal challenge taught you the toughest life lesson and how are you better off for that experience?

When I was at university, around age 18, casinos, which are legal everywhere in the U.K., became our hangout after clubbing, but having an addictive personality, it was only a matter of time before I started gambling. Blackjack became my poison, and it swallowed me whole for about eight years. The reason I stopped? I was working on cruise ships, playing the piano bar every night, and guess what was on my walk back to my cabin—the onboard casino, of course. So I’d sit down every night, hard-earned tips in one hand and ATM card in the other, and … I returned home at the end of that contract in more debt than when I left. That was the turning point. Before that, it had only ever been what I thought of as disposable income—student loans, or money I got from crappy jobs like delivering pizzas. But this ship gig was a real job, on my actual career path. If I was going to earn the living I’d always dreamed of, this had to stop. So… I just stopped. I knew there were way more important things at stake. Am I better for having gone through it? I definitely went to some seriously low places during those years—I know I’ll never want to be there again.

Martin Kaye plays Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet at Harrah’s. Shows are 5:30 & 8 p.m. Sun.-Mon. & 8 p.m. Tues.-Fri. Call 702.777.2782 for tickets.