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Every time I've been on Everest, people have died, though not in any expedition I was part of.

I died on that mountain, too. I left a part of myself up there.

I've fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

I began taking pictures in the natural world to be able to show people what I was experiencing when I climbed and explored in Yosemite in the High Sierra.

I went jogging up on Mulholland. In the middle of my run I had some form of asthma attack and couldn't even walk. I couldn't get a ride one block to my house. I thought I was going to die.

In February 1991, I was rushed to the hospital in Los Angeles to have my feet amputated. Three years earlier, I had broken the national 100 meters hurdles record while a student at UCLA and was a favourite for the event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Broke my femur on a cruise with my wife in Italy. I'd walked back to my cabin after dinner with half a plate of spaghetti when I leaned in to open the door. Turns out it was already open, so I fell flat on my face like something from the Keystone Kops.

I came to Los Angeles only after filming 'A Good Day to Die Hard,' when I was cast in the independent movie 'Delirium.' Director Lee Roy Kunz was looking everywhere for a Russian actress. He saw my photos, and only then he learned where I starred before! Eventually, I spent several months in the U.S., and we made the film quickly.