Katarina Witt: Breaking the ice

Born on December 3, 1965, Katarina Witt grew up in East Germany. As a young girl, she was drilled within the country's demanding sports system, training for hours in a city then called Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). She made it to a major podium in 1982, winning silver in figure skating at the European Championships. Many gold medals would follow - among them two at the Olympics.

On February 18, 1984, Katarina Witt won the gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo - beating the American favorite Rosalynn Sumners by a hundredth of a point. Voted that same year "GDR female athlete of the year," the skating star became a flagship of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

She managed to infuse charm in her rigorous performances. She also captured the attention of the audience with her revealing outfits. The International Skating Union even created a new rule stating that skating costumes should not be "excessively theatrical" - it became known as the "Katarina Rule."

In a new coffee-table book she is now releasing just before her 50th birthday, "So viel Leben" (So much life), she openly talks about the "merciless discipline and perfection" of her upbringing: "It can be a curse if you never learn to let go." The book includes around 300 photos of her career.

In an interview with the magazine "Stern," Katarina Witt reveals that she had her first million in her bank account by the age of 20. As a top star in East Germany, she enjoyed unusual privileges, such as driving a VW Golf car. As opposed to most people in the country, she was also free to travel. Here she wears a cowboy hat during the Olympics in Calgary in 1988, where she also won gold.

She was in Seville shooting for the choreography film "Carmen on Ice" when the Berlin Wall came down, but she would have preferred to be part of the action when it all happened. She was then 23. The HBO telefilm won a Primetime Emmy Award.

After German Reunification, she was criticized for being close to the East German regime. Despite the privileges she then had, the government had also kept a close watch on the athlete "Time" magazine once dubbed "the most beautiful face of socialism." Stasi spies collected 27 folders and 3,000 pages of material on her. On this picture, she is posing with her yearlong trainer, Jutta Müller.

In 1998, she posed naked for "Playboy" magazine. It was only the second time in the history of the magazine that an issue sold out. The previous time that had happened was in 1953, when it featured Marilyn Monroe.

Katarina Witt had a cameo role in the 1996 film "Jerry Maguire," starring Tom Cruise. Don't worry if you don't quite remember her performance: She said four words altogether in the film - "Congratulations, Jerry. Great job." She also appeared in different films and TV series, including "Frasier" and "Everybody Loves Raymond."

She now shares her name with an actual star. An asteroid was discovered in the year 2000 at a public observatory in Drebach, Germany. It was called "36800 Katarinawitt." Just a year earlier, the Germans had elected her "Ice Skater of the Century."

Katarina Witt now lives in Berlin and regularly works as a figure skating expert, a TV presenter and producer. She has also established a foundation for children with disabilities. As she reveals in her new book, she still enjoys being in the spotlight, but she no longer needs the glitter and the gold to enjoy life. "To my happiness, I've finally caught up with myself," she writes.