Oti Mabuse: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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.

Recorded Oti Mabuse said elsewhere, not written here

A paediatrician, then I was like, I can’t dissect frogs! Then I fell in love with making things and understanding how things work.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 July 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 195 →

Shirley MacLaine American actress and author

At three, I knew I was too tall to be a ballerina, so that wasn’t going to happen.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 July 2017 source ↗

Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

I know that for a very long time my consuming passion, which was confirmed when I contracted TB — I had TB when I was about 12 or so — was I wanted to be a physician and when I got TB I was even more determined. I want to be physician so that I can find a cure for the scourge. And, in fact, I was admitted to medical school. If we had had the funds maybe today I would have been a physician.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Jeremy Deller English artist