I've always been a risk taker. Growing up, I had a lot of freedom and room to roam and do what I wanted, and I think that's a huge part of my game.

I think we need to keep our faces out there and to keep our game out there and keep it growing.

Homophobia in male sports is much stronger than in women's sports; the locker room environment is a lot different. It's going to be much more of a brave step, an earthshaking move, for a gay male athlete to come out.

I think it's absolutely absurd that we're playing on turf, and it's really a slap in the face to women's football by FIFA and just a show of disrespect.

We've got our football where no one wears anything and the guys are in little shorts and they beat the crap out of each other, and they can catch it and they can kick it, and it's the only place it's played in the world.

For years in football I was angry with the game, angry with pundits and, a lot of the time, angry with the journalists writing about me. All that changed when I got my break in movies.

When I wrote my first book, 'The Tennis Party', my overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel. I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not just writing about my life, I'm a real author.'

Louis Tomlinson, who is a member of One Direction, his mum was a chaperone on 'Fat Friends.' So Louis used to come to the set with his mum, and since I was the only sort of young person around, we would kick a football around, things like that.