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.
My brother Joe, he’s nine years older than me.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 May 2026 source ↗
I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.
A criminal pathologist. Then I saw a show called Quincy ME and realised I just wanted to play one on TV.
In the Beatles.
A pop star: I loved music from a very young age.
As someone with integrity.
On one of my first jobs, Cold Mountain, I got a wasp in my ear in front of Jude Law. He couldn’t see the wasp so just saw me freak out.
To keep trying to listen to yourself.
Obsequiousness.
Driven, sensitive and playful.
Not playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. I am a huge Brando fan and a big Tennessee Williams fan and it’s a part I would love to have a go at. It’s possible I still could but I’m too old, really.
Julia Ormond, Shirley Ballas, Rachel Whiteread, Jack Whitehall, Ali Abbasi, Shirley MacLaine
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