I hate Valentine's day. It is a day for nothing but disappointment.

I'm a normal person and I don't have superpowers! I do normal things, too.

I love my job so much, and not everyone can say that and I recognize how lucky that is.

I don't know that I have any role models now that are fixed. Definitely my mom - she's the coolest. She's worked really hard her whole life and I just think she's got a great attitude. Moms just know so much it's so silly.

Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that's why, even not being an Olympic champion, I have such a huge following around the world.

Des Bulpin discovered me and, along with my dad, would be the biggest influence on my career. I remember him telling me when I was 15 that Jermain Defoe and I would play together for England when we were older, and he hasn't been too far wrong.

I want to have a long career. But that's based on wanting people to buy into my voice and not into a fabricated image.

The tsar of War and Peace, especially in the BBC version, is a complete popinjay and a useless character. The real tsar, Alexander I, had an amazing career.