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The Cory Monteith that most Americans knew wasn't Cory Monteith at all. He was Finn Hudson, the high school football star turned Glee club member, whose singing talents were discovered in the shower during the musical comedy's pilot episode on Fox TV.

But outside of a love for drumming, Monteith said, the character on the hit show wasn't him.

"You see this young all-American quarterback-looking dude on the show, and you just immediately make assumptions," Monteith told Canadian talk show host George Stroumboulopoulos on his CBC show, Tonight. "And I think people really started identifying me with those assumptions."

And that wasn't the reality. Monteith wasn't a high school football star. He was a high school dropout.

Monteith, 31, was found dead early Saturday in his hotel room in Vancouver, British Columbia. An autopsy reportedly is scheduled for Monday, but authorities have said that the Canadian's death doesn't appear to involve foul play.

Monteith got into drugs at age 13. He dropped out of school at 16 and found work as a Wal-Mart greeter and a taxi driver. At 19, he checked into rehab.

"I really had no idea what I was going to do. ... I was really lost. I was really lost for a lot of years," he said in the 2011 interview with Stroumboulopoulos. "For me it wasn't so much about the substances per se, it was more about not fitting in. ... I hadn't found myself at all."

But Monteith said acting changed that. He started landing small parts in TV shows like Stargate and Smallville.

And then came Glee.

"I think they were looking for the triple threat: singer, dancer, Broadway-type person for this part. And that's not really me," he said during the CBC interview. "I had never sang or danced or anything before this. And so I sent them a tape of myself acting, doing a scene. And instead of singing and dancing for the part I sent a tape of myself playing the drums on Tupperware."

Scientists and lawyers are scheduled to debate the safety of certain "BPA-free" plastics this week in a U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas.

At issue is whether a line of plastic resins marketed by Eastman Chemical contains chemicals that can act like the hormone estrogen, and perhaps cause health problems.

The court battle has attracted attention because the Eastman resins, sold under the name "Tritan," have been marketed as an alternative to plastics that contain an additive called BPA. BPA has been shown to act a bit like estrogen, though it's not clear whether people are affected by the small amounts that come from plastic water bottles or food containers.

Eastman has sued two small companies based in Austin, Texas, that published a study showing that a wide range of plastic products exhibit what's known as estrogenic activity. Some of the products were made from Eastman's Tritan.

Eastman's suit says PlastiPure and CertiChem have made false or misleading statements about Tritan in marketing their own services. CertiChem tests plastic products for estrogenic activity. PlastiPure, a sister company, helps manufacturers make plastic products with no estrogenic activity.

Both companies were founded by George Bittner, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and an author of the study that found estrogenic activity in most plastics. The study included tests of plastic products that had been subjected to heat, wear and radiation intended to mimic exposure to sunlight.

"We certainly thought the results were not going to be greeted with favor by at least some plastic manufacturers," Bittner says. But, he says, "by bringing suit, Eastman Chemical has effectively put its Tritan product on trial."

Eastman Chemical wouldn't comment for this story. But in an interview last year, Lucian Boldea, a vice president of the company, said Bittner's study used a screening test for estrogenic activity that is known to produce false positives.

"To misrepresent a screening test as conclusive evidence is what we have the issue with," he said.

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Plastic's New Frontier: No Scary Chemicals

Former President George H.W. Bush, who spent nearly two months in a Houston hospital during late 2012 and early 2013 for treatment of a variety of life-threatening illnesses, was hailed by President Obama at the White House on Monday.

"We are surely a kinder and gentler nation because of you," Obama told the nation's 41st president at a ceremony where the 5,000th Points Of Light Award was given to Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton. As The Associated Press writes, the retired couple and farm owners from Union, Iowa, "created Outreach, a nonprofit organization that delivers free meals to children suffering from hunger in more than 15 countries, including the United States."

Bush, now 89, spoke only briefly from his wheelchair — thanking the president for his "wonderful hospitality."

The Points of Light awards were established by then-President Bush in 1990. That same year, the Points of Light Foundation was "created as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization to encourage and empower the spirit of service."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

The debut detective novel The Cuckoo's Calling, seemingly written by a former Royal Military Police member named Robert Galbraith, was actually written by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, The Sunday Times revealed this weekend. Rowling's publisher confirmed the news. Richard Brooks, the Sunday Times' arts editor, told NPR in a phone interview that "it was frankly too good for a book by an unknown first-time author." The novel, supposedly based on Galbraith's "own experiences and those of his military friends," follows the private investigator and military veteran Cormoran Strike as he delves into the suspicious death of a supermodel. Brooks said one of the paper's columnists, India Knight, received an anonymous tip on Twitter saying the novel was by Rowling. The source's account was immediately deleted. Knight brought the tip to Brooks, who was initially skeptical. But after uncovering telling similarities between the detective novel and Rowling's other work — including heavy use of Latin and themes such as drug use and, as Brooks put it, "disdain for the privileged middle classes," he brought the novel to two linguistic analysts who, though they couldn't say definitely, identified strong similarities between The Cuckoo's Calling and Rowling's other work. Brooks also noted that Rowling and Galbraith shared an agent, a publisher and an editor. To his surprise, when he confronted Rowling's representatives, they confirmed the story. Rowling told the Times, "I hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback from publishers and readers under a different name."

Update at 12:45 p.m.: Asked about rumors that Rowling's publisher might have pulled a stunt and strategically leaked the story, Brooks replied, "Absolutely not." He continued: "They would not talk to me despite various requests. I had to do all the detective work." And Tamsin Kitson, publicity director for Little, Brown UK, declared in an email to NPR, "Any info The Sunday Times received was not leaked by us or planned in any way." Rowling publicist Nicky Stonehill likewise denied leaking the author's real name.

After threats of a boycott against the upcoming film version of Ender's Game because of author Orson Scott Card's anti-gay marriage views, the movie studio Lionsgate has released a statement clarifying its position on the controversy. In a statement quoted in The New York Times, Lionsgate said, "[W]e obviously do not agree with the personal views of Orson Scott Card and those of the National Organization for Marriage. However, they are completely irrelevant to a discussion of 'Ender's Game.' The simple fact is that neither the underlying book nor the film itself reflect these views in any way, shape or form."

Charles Simic writes an ode to summertime in The New York Review of Books: "There's something familial, deeply comforting in the sound of a pig oinking in the peace and slumber of a summer afternoon."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish is the final book by David Rakoff, the author and "This American Life" contributor who died of cancer last year. The book is an inventive rhyming prose poem, with lines such as, "Susan had never donned quite so bourgeois/ A garment as Thursday night's Christian Lacroix. / In college — just five years gone — she'd have abhorred it / But now, being honest, she [expletive] adored it." NPR's Alan Cheuse called it "cleverly rendered and entertaining."

Mark Leibovich's This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital is an account of the inner workings of Washington's political and media machines. He spoke to NPR's Rachel Martin this weekend: "It is a profile of a city that I think is widely misunderstood. ... I think what people don't have a full appreciation of is just the full carnival that Washington has become. The way in which the city has been completely revolutionized by money, by new media, by the celebrity madness that's sort of engulfed the rest of the culture."