When I did 'Dancing With the Stars,' I got literally thousands of emails from people saying, 'We relate to you. I've been divorced. I'm raising kids on my own.' Or, 'You've had money. You've lost money.'
I used to do too much weight training years ago. You probably wouldn't see it on me but I probably had a bit too much muscle.
I've worked with Hollywood stars, but the reason most of the Hollywood stars I've worked with are Hollywood stars is that they're excellent actors, so I've been very lucky.
I enjoyed dancing with the Hardy Boyz back in the day. We did a lot of stuff at the house shows, dancing with Eddy Guerrero, and I think I had Mark Henry dancing as well. Kurt Angle danced. There were a lot of people who enjoyed that part of the magic of Rikishi and Too Cool.
The irony is I did an intimate film in France with no stars and that got me to Hollywood. It got me to the Oscars. If I had tried to imitate the Americans or the Hollywood movies with a commercial recipe, I'd never have gotten to Hollywood. Although, it was not my goal in any way, and I never thought there was any connection between Monsieur Lazhar and the Oscars.
I'm a 15-time national champion, so for me I had a long, competitive dancing career before joining 'Dancing With the Stars.'
Far too many bodybuilders spend too much time exercising the smaller muscle groups such as the biceps at the expense of the larger muscle groups such as the thighs, and then they wonder why it is that they never make gains in overall size and strength.
If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.
So I hope to stretch my acting skills. I got to a point in my dancing where I felt like I did so much hard work and I achieved a lot of great things, and I wanted to try something else and put that same kind of commitment that I did into my dancing into something that I was also passionate about. I had so many opportunities with my dance and now I'm just excited to get better as an actress.
I grew up as a dancer. I did tap, classical ballet, all of that. I did Indian dancing, or Bharata Natyam, classic temple dancing from Madras, originally. My mother always had the great idea that I should learn it.
Everything I do through the course of my life, every day I do it with my arms, and it means that by using this muscle so much I have changed gradually the state of my muscle, turning my muscle into red fibers.
I wanted to go back on 'Dancing With the Stars,' I did it. One of my favorite shows is 'Hawaii Five-0.' I went on, guest starred. I wanted to be in a film, did 'Tasmanian Devils' in Vancouver. Wanted to host a show, boom, did it.
I had to be careful. A mistake I made when I submitted ideas initially was that one of them was too much like Elephant and Piggie, thinking that was what it needed to be. That's not what Mo was looking for. But I did definitely keep them in the back of my mind. It was tricky. Like Mo Willems was saying, it had to be something that Elephant and Piggie would like to read, yet we shouldn't make anything that was too much like Elephant and Piggie, because why would you want to do that?
I did have the odd person recognise me, but Australia is massive. I did 'Dancing With The Stars' and the odd thing for magazines, but that's about it.
When I did 'Dancing with the Stars' I did lose an awful lot of weight and I think at the time everybody was sort of alarmed by it. You can eat anything and it is still dropping off you when you are doing that amount of exercise.
My mother had gotten a job as a receptionist at a dancing school and had the idea that we should open our own dancing school; we did, and it prospered.