I was stupid when I was 17 or 18. My thought process was that I thought that I was legitimately a hyper-genius, and so I wanted to go to the hardest academic school I could to see if I was really as smart as I thought I was.
I never planned to be at the height of my career when I was 30 years old and going to my fourth Olympics. I watched the 1998 Olympics when I was 14 years old. That's what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I might have a shot at three Olympics max. This is way beyond the parameters of what I set out to do.
When I was a youngster, I might have been about 17 or 18 when I first started making beats.
When I was 12, I was living in Iowa, and I emailed so many wrestling schools, and one of them was actually in Boston. I joined it at 18 - the New England Pro Wrestling Academy. They were doing a fantasy camp. I was 17 about to turn 18. I told my mom, 'I'm 18 now. I just signed these papers by myself, and I'm going to do this.'
I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought anything might happen if I wasn't vigilant. I didn't eat. I didn't go out. I didn't want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And life...well, gradually became livable again.
We used to have a photo of me in full clown makeup taken when my son was 5. And when he was 17 or 18, he said, 'Yeah, that thing used to scare me. I hated that photo.' So it is scary; clowning is scary to people.
I started working with Special Olympics when I was 17 years old. I'll never forget the first time I did it: I was at Weber State, and it was the summer before I started school. We have to get up in the morning and do this Special Olympics camp.
I remember watching the '96 Olympics. For some reason, I was like 'Oh yeah, I'm going to go to the Olympics some day.' At that time as a kid, I did not know for what sport or really anything.
I think whenever I've thought something might go well, it hasn't, and when I've thought, 'Oh yeah, just chuck it out there,' that's when it kicks off, so now, I don't claim to understand anything.
I feel like I missed a whole period of my childhood because I had a bunch of stressful things happen to me when I was like 17, 18, when people usually feel the most free in life, like going to college and like anything is possible.
Nobody thought that I could become a professional. I was not that good. It was really just one thing I had fun doing. But it was never realistic for me to become a professional until I became 17 or maybe 18.
I am the Olympic Ambassador. I always promote Olympics. I just want to say, Olympics is Olympics. [You] cannot mix with politics. Olympics for me is love, peace, [being] united.
Skiing with friends in Reberty, France, after the Winter Olympics in 2010, was an amazing trip. I was at my happiest surrounded by all those mountains.
I am a freestyle mogul skier who, on February 13, became the first American to win a gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
What was my dream when I was 18? My big decision when I was 18 was full keg or pony-size keg. I knew by about 16 or 17 that I was going to be an actor. That was based on the fact that there were not a lot of things that I could be really good at, or that I would enjoy enough to not run out of the building screaming.