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My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.
I always felt like my value was much more in my intellect than it was in my appearance, and so that's what I spent time cultivating. And some of that I get from my mother, some of that comes from the schools that I went to, and some of that comes from probably insecurity.
The coach put me in goal, and back then, we were playing on bone-hard ground: red ash; we even trained on black ash, which was worse. That's not easy for a goalkeeper. My mother was always taking out her sewing kit for the countless holes in my training pants. For a long time, I had to buy my own gear.
I was my father's son and my mother's daughter. There was never any time when I felt I wasn't equally capable - whether it was being the only girl in the county who could hit a jump shot in basketball or playing first base in the baseball with the boys. I was always encouraged to do whatever I wanted to do.
I read a lot, very passionately, from the time I was very young, but it was a constant battle; my mother would more or less let me be, but with my father, I was always searching for a place where he wouldn't find me. Whenever he saw me reading, he would tell me to put the book down and go outside, act like a normal person.
It was in Cardiff, and the cast was 60 per cent Welsh-speaking. It's the first time I've walked into a rehearsal room speaking my mother tongue, which in itself was a breath of fresh clean air from the Welsh mountains. Singing Hans Sachs is always a milestone, but I was happy to be part of such an achievement, not personally but as a company.