Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!
Yeah, it's tough being smart and sexy, too. I have to say, I'm really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date. I promise you it's true. My husband Jeff Richmond saw a diamond in the rough and took me in.
For me, it's just finding ways to create shots. I feel like if I got a shot off, it has a good chance of going in. So it's finding ways of creating different shots. Being smart. I watch film a lot, and different tricks that I can do to get my shot off the ball and creating ways to get shots off of pick-and-rolls or one-on-one situations like that.
By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.
We should all feel confident in our intelligence. By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.
I don't see myself being special; I just see myself having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, to have answers.
I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special.
When I was growing up, officers in uniform were very impressive to me. They were doing a job. They were protecting our country; they were heroes. When you wear an old military jacket, there's some sort of connection to those qualities - to being strong, to being tough, to being a warrior.
For me, I've always wanted to portray roles that are empowering. Also, being empowering doesn't necessarily mean being strong all the time.
To me, being the best means proving it in different countries and championships.
Basic training was hard, but I made it - because I wanted to be the best me. Sometimes you have to learn that being the best you is being the second best you. I learned the hard way that the army doesn't want people who always come first. Otherwise, there would be only one person in the army.
I've come a very long way, especially from my young career. From not always being the best guy on the team to just increasing my work ethic every single year, every single summer. Just seeing the hard work pay off, I think that's what's most gratifying for me.
Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, 'It can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.
Me being the best in the world, it doesn't mean that much to me if I'm not a good person at the end of the day, if I'm not setting a good example for other people to be better to each other.
I can stand in a crystal stream without another human around me and cast all day long, and if I never catch a single fish, I can come home and still feel like I had a wonderful time. It's the being there that's important.
Working through experience is best for me, just being there and trying to get into the mode.
I'm not ashamed to be me. More than anyone else I know, I love my life and accept myself. What's wrong with being unique? I am proud of everything that I am and will become.
For a long time, I refused to wear jeans. I liked high-waisted pants, but jeans made me feel like I wasn't being unique. Even now, I won't wear the skinny-jeans style, because most people wear those - they have to be baggier, boyfriend-looking, or sort of like a mom jean. I'm real funny that way.
I don't want to be the cliche American Idol dude. I want to be different, you know - that's the whole goal, me and music. It's about being yourself and being unique.
I just love any kind of language that can change the energy in a room. There are no limits for me, as long as it feels like it's being used in a particular way to garner or elicit a very particular reaction so that you can then use that reaction later for something else.
