When I was a teenager, my idol was the Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff. He's the only person I've ever asked for an autograph.
I feel very strong as an individual, but as a famous footballer I know I am prone to certain things. All the media have a continuous interest for me. It varies from once a year to every day interest.
I'm a working class lad. So at 25, and with no-one in our family having any theatrical inclination, when I said, 'I'm going to scratch all that and become an actor,' I may as well have said I was going to be a Premiership footballer for the chance I'd have.
As a private person I think I am now totally different from Ruud van Nistelrooy the footballer.
You're obviously conscious of being brash or big-headed but I always knew I was going to be a footballer when I was seven or eight. I didn't just think I wanted to be one, I knew I was going to be one. Nothing ever surprised me really.
People are intrigued when they discover you date a footballer - women especially.
It was very hard for me as a kid to get through as a footballer in Uruguay.
I wasn't really interested in girls. Only football. I was just enjoying football all the time. There was a five-a-side next to the flat, and I used to play there all the time. It was all about football. I wanted to be a professional. That was my goal. I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer.
I played semi-professionally for a season, and there's an element of performance to being a footballer, stepping onto the pitch: you feel like a gladiator walking into a colosseum.
People don't understand that the feel of the surface is so important for a footballer. The ball travels on the surface; our feet move on the surface - all of that goes into how the game is actually played.
My talent as a footballer was medium. But I had heart, a will to win, to work to overcome my limitations.
The myth about me as a footballer has grown: I am now the lost Maradona of Norway.
To be a footballer was just a dream, and I don't believe in dreams. I only deal in what is real. To be honest, I've never thought about what I could get out of football or where it would take me. I just wanted to play. I'm the same now.
At the end of the day, I'm a footballer who has played at some of the biggest football clubs in the world and played with some of the best players in the world.
When you are a player, a footballer, or a manager of a great club like Chelsea, you must play to win. To win. To win the title. Or to fight and, at the end, to compete with the other teams to win the title and reach your targets.
It's interesting how Rod Stewart can father a child at 65, and a straight, single footballer named Cristiano Ronaldo can arrange to have a surrogate have a baby, and neither of them receives any criticism.
Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United.
Being married to a footballer is some girls' dream, but it isn't always like that. I work.
I could have been a professional footballer and trialled with Blackburn Rovers. But I snapped my cruciate ligaments, an injury that has dogged me ever since.
