FJ
Nearly crashing into a train on one film, almost falling out of a hot-air balloon on another, narrowly avoiding getting knocked over by a taxi …
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 May 2023 source ↗
The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
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Others on this question
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Brendan Gleeson
Irish actor and director
Getting knocked down by a bus. The experience left me with the exhilaration of life enhanced.
I think I had a close shave with the taxi driver John Worboys. I was in Soho and going back to Chiswick where I lived, and I got a black cab. This guy wouldn’t stop talking and he offered me champagne, and I said: “I don’t like champagne.” It went a bit quiet and I thought I’d offended him. Then I remember going: “Hang on a minute, you shouldn’t be drinking champagne if you’re driving.” And he said: “I’ve just won the lottery and I’m finished after this.” I had a lucky escape.
On the interstate. Anyone who has driven in the United States will know that you are always very close to death – it is like the wild west on the freeways.
Adrian Edmondson
English actor, comedian, musician and writer
I hit a bit of lumpy tarmac driving my motorbike over the Pyrenees in the early 1980s. There was no safety barrier and I found myself riding along the edge of a precipice on half the width of the tyres for 100 yards.
More from Felicity Jones
View profile →Peaceful and joyful.
Trying to do a million things at once.
If mobile phones hadn’t been invented.
I wouldn’t change anything. Life is what it is, you just have to get on with it.
A magazine editor.
No one, I’m pretty good at saying sorry.
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John Malkovich, Brendan Gleeson, Laurence Fox, Olivia Williams, Rosanna Arquette, Robert Carlyle
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