Nowadays a gold medal is a $1 million contract. Our athletes are our heroes.
Acting allows me the freedom to let go, to be in the moment, to be spontaneous. I no longer have the fear of losing, of failure.
I've been able to play a kid up to this point and pretend that I'm not a grown-up - well, at least for two hours a night!
I remember secretly going off and crying. All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?'
I just like to act.
I will jump into most any role.
Our athletes are our heroes.
An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.
I was always very active as a kid. I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open.
It's really hard to separate fantasy from reality.
It's that athlete's obsessiveness - the need to prove yourself and work harder than anybody else. I think it's what helped me do well in the theater.
So it really does have a sort of bittersweet quality. Kids like to have adventures and to believe they can fly, but there's also that fear about people leaving you.
Actually, performing is a lot like golf. You are alone, so vulnerable.
There's so much denial in gymnastics. It's a beautiful sport but the other part is numbing. You become machinelike. They'll refute this, but I've been around it. I know.
I'll talk to kids afterward and somebody will always say, 'I'll leave my bedroom window open for you.
I never realized until recently how much my life parallels Peter Pan.
In high school I never went to the prom because I was too consumed with gymnastics. Also, with my hair in pigtails and looking about 10, I wasn't exactly date material.
Seeing the show is like a visit to the fountain of youth for parents and the children.
I grew up in a sport that didn't allow you to grow up. There was always the threat of younger competition. So you had to maintain the image of youth.
I have three dogs and a cockatoo.
