The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
First loved, then laid, then paid.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 June 2025 source ↗
I just wanted to fulfil my potential.
I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.
A teacher and a nightclub singer.
A mutant turtle ninja.
I’m from Birmingham. I’m not afraid of things. Things are afraid of me.
Appearing on US breakfast radio. I heard the DJ say that after the news we would hear from the author Lincoln Child. I had to choose between making a guy with a mixed-up PR release look like an idiot or pretending to be Lincoln. I pretended.
In 1993, making love on the beach of a deserted island in the Bahamas.
A painting by Renoir, paid for by demanding a huge fee for a screenwriting deal with a producer I didn’t want to work for. The movie was never made.
“Try this, you’ll love it.”
More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.
Sofia Coppola, Shaznay Lewis, Ben Okri, Toyah Willcox, Michael Stipe, Nish Kumar
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