I never had teenage years. I guess because I was seen to be more adult than anybody around me.

As the captain, I was going to be having the dominant role in most of the episodes, and that was appealing. I wasn't interested in coming to Hollywood to sit around.

Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings in expressing his ideas about many things - I found that very interesting.

I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek.

One of the defining things about my career on camera is I like to play different characters. That gets difficult to do. People don't trust you to do something different. In animation, it's all about trust and how far can you go away from yourself. It's a really marvelous environment that's extremely creative.

I'm from Minnesota and have always lived there. And my competitive career actually started in the late '90s racing motocross, which then turned into racing snowmobiles professionally. I turned pro in 2003, racing with the best in the world and living my dream as a professional athlete.

At the end of my journey, I see myself as a Rocket. That's where I ended my career, and also the organization that did so much for me. They knew I had a vision, and I went to work for the owner, who's a man who believes in philanthropy and believed in me as a player.

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.