NEW YORK — As an aspiring young actor, Paul Cortez had leading roles in high school and college productions of "West Side Story," "Carousel" and "Amadeus," to name a few.

But on Thursday, the 26-year-old New Yorker gave his most memorable performance before a packed audience in Manhattan Supreme Court, in the real-life role of an accused murderer testifying in his defense.

Manhattan district attorneys say Cortez brutally slashed the throat of his estranged girlfriend, Catherine Woods, when she tried to end their relationship. They claim footprints matching his shoe size and his bloody fingerprint place him in Woods' Upper East Side apartment on Nov. 27, 2005, the day she was killed.

During a nearly five-hour monologue that was periodically interrupted by Justice Carol Berkman's urgings to "get off the dime," Cortez recounted his life story up to his turbulent relationship with Woods, an aspiring dancer who became a stripper to pay the bills.

He asserted his innocence, claiming that he loved Woods too much to kill her.

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"When we were good, it was great. When we were arguing, she was distant, but we would always come back together," said Cortez, who wore a light-blue sweater and his short brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.

He smiled warmly as he recalled first meeting Woods in 2004 at a gym where he worked as a personal trainer. But as the relationship evolved, he said, he struggled to accept her working as a stripper, especially after she was supposedly drugged and raped on the job.

"I felt that it was a dangerous industry to be in," Cortez said, as Woods' mother sat knitting in the audience. "But I accepted it ... it was part of her life, and if I wanted her I had to accept it."

He attacked the state's case point by point in an effort to discredit the evidence linking him to the death of the 21-year-old victim, who moved to New York from Ohio in 2000 to pursue her dream of dancing on Broadway.

Regarding the bloody fingerprint on her bedroom wall, Cortez suggested it might have been from the couple having sex while Woods was having her period.

"Would you get your hands dirty?" defense attorney Laura Miranda asked. "Did you ever get your hands on the wall when you were making love when she was having her period?"

"Yes," Cortez said. "I could have."

The aspiring singer-songwriter also attempted to explain several personal journal entries that he wrote about Woods, which prosecutors introduced to show that he grew increasingly obsessed with her in the months before her death.

Jurors listened intently as Cortez explained the history behind one particular song called "The Killin Machine," which he wrote one month before Woods' death.

"[Guys] equate violence with sex, so I made this song a combination of the two themes," Cortez explained, smiling bashfully. "A lot of the words are double entendres on sex and violence."

He then read the lyrics in a singsong voice, against the justice's orders, raising eyebrows throughout the courtroom.

"I feel the surge, her electric urge is pushin me up to the verge, breakdown bitches, they never gonna shatter my urge," Cortez read loudly and clearly.

"You lookin real fine, girl the way you move your hips is so wicked divine, tryna hold us down ... betcha get violated grippin on the killin machine," he read.

He also claimed that the final entry in his book called "don't look back" was written after Woods' death.

"I wrote this song about someone losing their love and being convicted of something they didn't do," Cortez explained.

"Was it your intention to cause harm to Catherine Woods?" Miranda asked.

"Not at all," he said.

Cortez's direct examination continues Friday. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder.