I find it not hard to make friends, but it's definitely different when I go somewhere like summer camp and everyone already knows that I'm in 'Hunger Games'... My life is still pretty normal, and I still have some really great friends.

And I found out, the other part of it is that I found out and in my desire to life successfully, that baseball fit very well into my life. It's been a great teacher, trainer, mentor and you'll see what I mean in the next few minutes that I have to speak.

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'

I've always been afraid to do a solo show. When I go to see the great solo shows of Liz Callaway or Christine Ebersole, they have so many incredible stories to talk about, and their material and lives are so rich. I've always worried that my life was not rich enough.

I've never landed in a series that I could have dreamt in my life. That's why, when people say, 'Well what are roles you're dying to play?' I say, I don't even have such a list, because everything that's ever been great that I had a shot at came completely out of the blue. I could not have predicted it.

Back in Romania, always I was struggling to compete with Vladislav Rastorotsky, the great Russian coach of Lyudmila Turishcheva. He was a powerful coach, internationally. I took him like the major challenge of my life, and pretty soon I'm beating him and we are pushing each other so hard, so fierce. But out of the arena, we are friends.

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