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I want to do a little bit of everything. I love sci-fi. I think it's more the characters that draw me towards things. I like strong women. I'm very interested in futuristic stuff, anything.

Ever since I was a kid, I've had an enormous interest in the sciences - everything from quantum physics to anthropology.

I want to fly a jet. I'd love to just be in the air and go mach 3 or mach 4. Or, I'd be an underwater salvager. I've always been fascinated with the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis. I love chemistry, also. That's why acting is so random for me!

I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

I always have said from the beginning of my career that I was going for the 'Geek Trifecta' because I'm such a total geek. I want to be in everything that has to do with the things that I enjoyed when I was a kid, which was 'Battlestar Galactica,' and being in 'Big Bang Theory,' and being in video games.

I wanted to become a mathematician, physicist or astronomer.

We have to be plumbers, electricians, construction engineers, or workers, on the space station, but at the same time running a laboratory, being scientists, being the best laboratory assistants we can be. It's all in a bundle; it's very exciting, it's a lot of fun.

I went to the University of Washington as a physics and astronomy major. My other interest, of course, was aviation. I always wanted to be a pilot. And if you're going to fly airplanes, the best place to be is the Air Force.

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.