For every dancer, no matter how amazing your career, there's more to life than ballet. Being adored by your audience, it's only part of the story.

As a little girl, I didn't dream of being a ballet dancer; I dreamt of being a movie star like Ginger Rogers and dancing with Fred Astaire. I used to watch the Sunday double-bills on TV and Iong to be part of what seemed a perfect Disneyland world. Astaire was a genius.

Ballet requires movements which are very unnatural. With every step, you do a circular movement of the hip. You turn out from the hip and make your knees point out to the side instead of forward.

Classical ballet is very extreme. You're doing it six days a week, and it's a kind of obsession of perfecting a move. So every muscle in your body has been stretched and tightened, stretched and tightened.

Everything is not beautiful at the ballet. It's tough.

Being on stage taught me how to apply eyeliner.