Storm Large doesn’t hold back, not when she’s on stage singing, nor talking in an interview.

The performer — part rock star, part chanteuse, part diva, also an author — called this week from New York, where she was workshopping a possible new musical before producers and financiers, and hoping to add “Broadway star” to her resume. In a conversation peppered with expletives, she described a life filled with emotion, rebellion and a passion — she calls it “obsession” — for expressive, honest songwriting and performance.

“I actually have to … act , and be charming. That’s kind of hard,” said Large. (Yes, her parents really did name her Storm, but she called it a “boring story” that might be the only boring part of her colorful life.) “The other guy in the reading is a man named Len Cariou, who was the original Sweeney Todd (on Broadway). He plays my first husband, and then I leave him for some hot artist.”

Her hoped-for theatrical transformation might be expected from someone like Large, who’s been through so many in real life.

Large, who brings her band to Hawaii Theatre on Friday, has spent a lifetime remaking herself, from runaway child seeking recognition to West Coast club rocker to reality TV star, versatile vocalist and now, a national celebrity.

Her star was born with her 2006 10-week run on “Rock Star: Supernova,” the CBS reality show that set out to find a singer for a rock supergroup featuring Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. She was invited on to the show after producers saw a video of her cussing out an audience member who had dared to pull out a cellphone while she was singing one of her tunes – a love song called “I Want You to Die.”

“The crowd gets his phone and brings it to me, and I call my friend in New York and I’m like, ‘Call me back at this number, because this is my phone now!’” she said. “Someone took a video of that whole event and the reality TV people went, ‘This is awesome. This girl is unhinged! She can sing and she’s nuts!’ And then I sadly got on the show and I was so, so unfortunately professional.”

But she left her mark on the show, not only for her powerful pipes, but for being the first contestant to take a stage dive. “There’s nothing sexier than seeing a hot chick dive head-first into an audience,” said judge Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction after her performance.

Now a resident of Portland, Ore., Large grew up in Massachusetts. She remembers “Jesus Christ Superstar” as one of her favorite recordings, but from there, the list of influences on her is a long and winding road. “The Beatles, the Kinks, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, ABBA, and then 21 Pilots, AWOL Nation. I’m all over the … place,” she said. “If a song moves me, I just get obsessed with it. I follow my gut and my heart.”

An example is her moody, haunting take on Cole Porter’s “Under My Skin,” the featured work on her latest album, 2014’s “La Bonheur.” “I didn’t set out to alter Cole Porter or take something traditional and beautiful and force it to suit my needs,” she said. “I just performed it with a little bit more energetic accuracy to the lyric. The music is usually jaunty, and hopeful, snappy … but there’s a voice in my … head that says, ‘This is going to end badly. You’re not going to win.’”

She still believes in love — “It’s all around me,” she said — but some of the darkness undoubtedly comes from her troubled childhood. In her 2012 autobiography “Crazy Enough: A Memoir,” she writes about growing up with a mother who had been diagnosed with mental illness — Large now believes it was PTSD stemming from her mother’s childhood experience as a rape victim — and the fear that she also would develop similar psychological trauma.

“I was afraid I was going to become — that,” she said. “One of her doctors said, ‘Yeah, it’s hereditary. You’re going to end up like that, but you’ll be OK.’ What!? (laughing) F—- you!”

Her refuge was in singing, although she got little encouragement. Even when her parents’ adult friends would offer praise for her singing, her family passed it off as a bid to get attention.

“I wasn’t encouraged to pursue art because ‘art was for losers.’ I would sing in bands, and then kind of get in trouble,” she said. “At the end of the day, I wasn’t beaten, I wasn’t locked in the attic, I wasn’t denied food, but I certainly wasn’t encouraged.

“And when I found I could sing and make people happy, when people would be happy and excited to see that I was going to get in front of a microphone and make some noise, that’s all I needed.”

She remembers the moment when she got validation for her abilities: singing at an open mic in San Francisco in 1992. “I sang one song with this band called Louder Than God, and the place went … berserk. After that, everyone was following around me going, ‘Please, please, please, will you sing for my band?’

“I was like, ‘I probably suck. I’m probably stupid, I’m not pretty, I’m not cool. I don’t know how to dress. But I’m going to get laid, I’m going to get free beer — I got free sushi that night — so there’s something to this.’”

Large is an instinctive, natural talent. She’s had no formal instruction in singing or music in general, and doesn’t read music. But she can listen to a tune and not just mimic what she hears, but also immediately come up with an interesting take on it.

Most of what she’s learned has come from singing in bars and clubs in San Francisco and Portland.

“My training is all from clubs, just being a club rat singing punk rock and losing my voice, and then figuring out how not to lose your voice,” she said. “Mind you, at the time I was a drug addict and smoking cigarettes, so I was like, ‘Why am I losing my voice all the time?’”

She was serious enough about her singing to seek therapy from top vocal coach Raz Kennedy, who has worked with vocal gymnast Bobby McFerrin and other top singers. “He knew how to smooth me back to a healing place,” Large said. “My voice is stronger and better because I’m not a big screamer any more, and I certainly don’t smoke any more.

“The kind of music that I’m singing is actually the kind of music that’s good for a voice. What’s bad for your voice is exhaustion, which is something I have to get past, because I work a lot, and I don’t like to say ‘no’ to things, especially if they’re interesting.”

What’s interested her in the years since “Rock Star” is an impressively diverse set of opportunities. She’s toured with Pink Martini, the Portland-based cross-genre ensemble, which has given her “an amazing education.” She’s sung Kurt Weill tunes at Carnegie Hall, toured with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Houston Symphony and the New York Pops. She performed American standards with Michael Feinstein and took a Portland-based production of “Cabaret” to Europe and Australia.

Large is really looking forward to enjoying the sand and sun of Hawaii, she said. She’s performed once here before, at a friend’s wedding.

“I’ll probably play ukulele, and apologize for it the whole time, because I play baritone ukulele. It’s not traditional, it’s kind of a BS lazy guitar,” she said. “What you’re really going to get is my drooling, sycophantic adoration of how beautiful Hawaii is, and maybe some jokes, and definitely a lot of music.”