My role models were Kevin Phillips and David Beckham, and, for me, now girls can look up to female footballers and want to aspire to be them and try to follow in their footsteps and even be better than us.
I went to many games with my dad, Kevin, and looked up to the players. It's surreal that now young fans are looking up to me.
I was player-manager at Sheffield United. I played my last ever game for them. It was terrible. We lost 4-1, I think to Sunderland. Fancy that, a Geordie, being forced to retire because of a defeat to Sunderland.
Sam [Phillips] wanted I Walk The Line up - you know, up-tempo. And I put paper in the strings of my guitar to get that (vocalizing) sound, and with the bass and the lead guitar, there it was. Bare and stark, that song was when it was released. And I heard it on the radio and I really didn't like it, and I called Sam Phillips and asked him please not to send out any more records of that song.
Growing up, we never got to see a hero who didn't have superpowers who looked like us, that you could kind of look to and say, 'I could be that guy one day. I could be a patriot. I could be a soldier. I could work in the government and be a hero.'
Growing up, I looked up to real women. I didn't go in for hero worship and I still don't. Everybody has feet of clay.
We have these rules, the 'hero rules.' Like, a hero doesn't slouch. A hero walks proudly with his head up. A hero walks with a purpose. A hero's always a gentleman.
I look at Large Professor as a big influence. I grew up with him and being able to grow up with him enabled me to meet Nas, Busta, Q-Tip and all these people I looked up to at the time. Even Large himself. He was a good friend but at the same time he was definitely someone I looked up to.
Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy...if there hadn't been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.
When I was very young, coming into the Sunderland side, if we got beaten, I'd be very down. I'd go home, and it would drag on for days, I'd be thinking about the game. I was from Sunderland, felt things like a fan, and got really down.
In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.
Everyone has an inner hero that they have glimpsed from time to time, just waiting to break free Now is the time to tap into your true hero potential.
I am extremely proud and honoured to have beaten Pete's record as he was my childhood hero and I have always looked up to him.
I was still with Sunderland at the time of my first cap in 2010, and I remember getting the text to let me know that I was going to be called up to the squad - it was a Friday night, and I was in a hotel in London because we were playing Chelsea the next day.
When I structured my career, I looked at Muhammad Ali, which is my all-time favorite and an idol of mine, and what he has done for this sport. He was a real-life hero.
Kevin Bacon and I went up for the same stuff, and people would say, 'You and Kevin have the same quality.' I was like, 'I do?' I remember seeing 'Footloose' and thinking, 'How do I have any kind of quality that that guy does?'