I was the very first athlete in East Germany allowed to go professional.

It's not like I didn't do anything for 10 years and chose a new profession. I've been on the ice a lot. I'm not an outsider.

Skating taught me to set a goal and to block out other things and just focus on this one thing.

Competitions make me nervous. When I go out on the ice, I just think about my skating and not, 'I have to do this to win.' I forget it is a competition.

I'm a professional athlete. I've been paid since I was in my early 20s to go out there and fight with guys who were 40 or 50 pounds heavier than I am and fight for my life. I got into a business where people make decisions based on some of the most stupid things.

The walls of our upstairs hallway testify that we once had photogenic children. There are rows of framed pictures that show them playing baseball, basketball, holding a toad, and smiling in the sunlight at their eager parents. Everything is orderly and bright.

There's all that brain work involved, remembering all those lines in a script. I find I have to eat a lot of fish, late - but not too late - in the afternoon. Doing theatre, you need to be like an athlete in training.

The word 'geek' today does not mean what it used to mean. A geek isn't the skinny kid with a pocket protector and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks, and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you're passionate about something.