The 30-year-old has won the Ballon d'Or three times but says that he never needed to model himself on any particular idol growing up, beyond his single-minded desire to play for the Portugal national team.
"Most of the time, I inspired myself," Ronaldo told Unscriptd. "I'm self-motivated.
"But of course, at that age, I was looking at a big reference in the national team - for example, [Luis] Figo, Rui Costa, Fernando Couto. It was kind of a dream to reach that level.
"The national team, I'd look at them and I'd speak for myself: I want to be a professional player and I want to play for the national team. But I don't have one specific person that I just follow."
Ronaldo also explained that he now looks outside of football to other sports to learn lessons from elite players regardless of their field.
He continued: "As I said before, I'm self-motivated. I'm always like that since the beginning when I was young, [up until] now.
"Of course, I appreciate other players, talented players, great players - not just in football but in other sports because people enjoy to see, in different specific sports, the best ones.
"You should be able to understand that you don't know everything so the other guy can help you in this kind of way so I just pick the best things off other sports."
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