JM
I’ve been in six car accidents – none of them while I was driving.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 August 2018 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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Paul O'Grady
British comedian, actor and television presenter
I had a bad heart attack 20 years ago: I think I slid off the mortal coil for about 30 seconds.
Noah Harari
Israeli historian and philosopher
I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.
I’ve had a few hairy scrapes as a scuba diver.
Nicola Walker
British actress
Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”
More from Jonathan Rhys Meyers
View profile →Relapsing. I usually spend eight, nine, 10 months sober, then I’ll spend a day relapsing and I get disappointed. But it never lasts too long. I get back up and try again.
My collection of paintings. I have some by William Burroughs.
The public mistakes I’ve made. Most recently, I tried to light an e-cigarette on an aeroplane and was told to put it out. I completely forgot I was on a plane. I’d had, like, three drinks, but it only takes three. I stopped as soon as I got off and I got straight back into my programme, because that’s what I do.
An incredibly long one – maybe the entire St Matthew Passion – just so everybody would have to sit in the church for hours.
As a complex and brilliant man.
Wanting to be better: a better actor, a better father.
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