I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

While I thought that I was learning how to live I have been learning how to die.

My dad's a bodybuilder. My whole life I've been taught to train the hard way. I believe in earning strength not buying it. My grandfather raised me old school: In baseball you work for whatever you get.

My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist but he never achieved it and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have.

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.

Where I come from you don't really talk about how much you're earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I'm certainly not going to tell the world. I'm doing well.

I'm still shy - I'm no good at my children's parent-teacher conferences and I'm slowly learning how to ask for what I want. But I now know that I have a reserve of courage to draw upon when I really need it. There's nothing that I'm too scared to have a go at.

TV is so different from the movies. It takes a lot of stamina because you work such long hours. It is really challenging. You are learning the next day's lines while you are shooting today's scenes. I found courage I never realised I had. I hope to do more.

I was training more learning how to scuba dive which I'd never done which was really really really cool.

People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google you know 'Soave ' and say 'Oh O.K. cool.'