Cathy Rigby
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.Collection: Failure
Seeing the show is like a visit to the fountain of youth for parents and the children.
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.
I'll talk to kids afterward and somebody will always say, 'I'll leave my bedroom window open for you.
Flying is such a joy. You just want to hoot.
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.
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.
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.
I have three dogs and a cockatoo.
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.
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.
An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.
Actually, performing is a lot like golf. You are alone, so vulnerable.
Our athletes are our heroes.
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.
I just like to act.
I will jump into most any role.
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?'
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!
I never realized until recently how much my life parallels Peter Pan.
Nowadays a gold medal is a $1 million contract. Our athletes are our heroes.
You see your peers weighing 80 pounds and you think, 'Oh, my God, I've got to be 80 pounds or I'll fail.'
There's no disgrace in failure, the disgrace is not to try.Collection: Leadership
The thing I received from Girl Scouts more than anything else was a sense of real teamwork and working for the community, helping others, and it was not competitive. I remember working as a group to achieve a goal or to help the community. There was a great sense of accomplishment in that.Collection: Girl