In high school I never went to the prom because I was too consumed with gymnastics. Also, with my hair in pigtails and looking about 10, I wasn't exactly date material.
Cathy Rigby
I remember secretly going off and crying. All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?'
There's so much denial in gymnastics. It's a beautiful sport but the other part is numbing. You become machinelike. They'll refute this, but I've been around it. I know.
Our athletes are our heroes.
Acting allows me the freedom to let go, to be in the moment, to be spontaneous. I no longer have the fear of losing, of failure.
I will jump into most any role.
Nowadays a gold medal is a $1 million contract. Our athletes are our heroes.
I never realized until recently how much my life parallels Peter Pan.
Flying is such a joy. You just want to hoot.
You see your peers weighing 80 pounds and you think, 'Oh, my God, I've got to be 80 pounds or I'll fail.'
When you're on the Olympic team at 15, you don't do anything else. There's no normal social development, and your decisions are made for you.
I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open.
Actually, performing is a lot like golf. You are alone, so vulnerable.
Seeing the show is like a visit to the fountain of youth for parents and the children.
I grew up in a sport that didn't allow you to grow up. There was always the threat of younger competition. So you had to maintain the image of youth.
I'll talk to kids afterward and somebody will always say, 'I'll leave my bedroom window open for you.
I have three dogs and a cockatoo.
So it really does have a sort of bittersweet quality. Kids like to have adventures and to believe they can fly, but there's also that fear about people leaving you.
It's that athlete's obsessiveness - the need to prove yourself and work harder than anybody else. I think it's what helped me do well in the theater.
It's really hard to separate fantasy from reality.
I was always very active as a kid. I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open.
An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.
I just like to act.
I've been able to play a kid up to this point and pretend that I'm not a grown-up - well, at least for two hours a night!
