I read that at a key fork in the road moment for me where I just sold CD Baby and had a ton of money. I was like, “What to do now?” And I read this book from this filthy rich old man being entirely honest, and I thought I should just learn from his experience. ... So if what I’m doing seems weird, it’s because I took his advice to heart and I’ve quit the game.

I stopped being a teacher when the South African Government introduced a deliberately inferior education for blacks called Bantu education, and I felt I wasn’t ready to collaborate with this apology for an educational system. Our children, the 1976 kids who revolted against apartheid in Soweto, called it “gutter education,” and it was gutter education. I left teaching. Of course, I didn’t have too many option, and mercifully, the Bishop of Johannesburg at that time accepted me for training for the priesthood. So I came to the priesthood, as it were, by default.

But I'm ready for what's next after rugby. Being able to not just say that, but to truly feel it, is a privilege. Ultimately, getting to leave your sport on your own terms is all you can really hope for as an athlete.

As a very young singer, I was invited to the opera house in Berlin by the then-director of the opera house, Egon Seefehlner, and I had one opera to my name that I knew. He felt that there was a lot that I could learn there, which was very true, and I was so lucky to be able to have this opportunity. The thing that was happening is that I kept being offered operas that I knew that I wasn’t ready to sing, just from an experience point of view, as well as being 24 years old. So I was always asked to sing things that I thought, “Well no, I really don’t think I should sing that now. I need to sing that maybe in five years, or maybe in 10 years, but not right now. Couldn’t I please sing something else?” And that became a difficulty for me. And after being at the opera house for three years, and singing Elsa and Elisabeth — the Wagner roles that are not sort of the heavy Wagner roles — and then Mozart operas that suited my voice at the time, I was continually invited to sing things that I just felt I shouldn’t. So I took it upon myself to go to speak with the artistic director to say that I thought I should leave the opera house, and come back in some years when my maturity sort of chronologically would have caught up with the invitations that I was being offered. Of course, considering that he’d taken me into the opera house when I knew one role, he wasn’t all that happy. I thought he’d say, “Oh, what a smart girl. Oh yes, absolutely. That’s what we’ll do.” No, no. He was absolutely furious.

I used to use the brush before that time before 2015, but then I gave it up for a while. Now I’m back on the brush, so that’s the truth.

I can start from any space when I feel it and find my way back from there.

I know when it’s completed but I don’t have a formula for this.

Whenever we went out to dinner or a party, especially when I had a temper tantrum, drawing was the remedy of choice. It only calmed me down. [Laughs] It still does.

Knowledge is good for life. Life is what you play off for acting.

Yes. Although I acted early on, I always wanted to be a painter.