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I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.

My television and movie career has also taken me all over the world. I've had great times in the Far East, Russia, South America and Sweden - where I met my wife of 55 years, Maj.

My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.

My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.

Well, I first started going to Europe in the late '70s.

I have been lucky enough to travel a lot, meet great people in many lands. I have liked almost everyone I met along the way.

I took time off from school and traveled to Italy when I was 19, living with my extended family members. I must have slept in 30 different houses those months, taken in by people who'd never even met me.

Then I was lucky I met with my future husband, and I started new life with my husband, and I was happy again. He was a musician. I start to travel with him through Europe also and around the former Soviet Union.

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy, I slogged through the Ardennes, and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

My parents separated soon after I was born, so I left Helsinki when I was a year old. My mother took me to Paris and then other places throughout Western Europe.