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 David Lynch said elsewhere, not written here
Well, my family moved to Alexandria, Virginia from Boise, Idaho when I was in the eighth grade. Pretty soon after that, one night, on the front lawn of my girlfriend’s house, I met a boy named Toby Keeler, who went to a private school. He told me his father was a painter. At first I thought he meant a house painter, but then he said, “No, fine art painter” and a bomb went off in my head. In that millisecond, I only wanted to be a painter.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, AnOther Magazine, 16 January 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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Robert Bathurst English theatre and television actor
Wimbledon champion. I won the title frequently when playing against a pebbledash wall at home in Ireland.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 June 2020 source ↗

More from David Lynch

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Question When were you happiest? Time & hindsight
Let's see. Well, kind of every day. Like I said, it doesn't go away - this is a sort of a thing you carry around with you. I like isolation. I've been isolated, you know, for six months or seven months now, however long it's been. At the same time, you can be happy inside and still worried about the world. I'm worried about the world as it is right now, so many people suffering and so much negativity.
Recorded Chris Heath, GQ, 21 January 2025 source ↗
Question How does a new work begin for you? Craft & work
An idea comes. Scripts are organised ideas. When you read a script, it comes alive in your head. And that aliveness in the head is like seeing it and hearing it and knowing it. Or if an idea comes from outside, boom, you catch it in your brain and you see it and you hear it, and you know it. You sometimes fall in love with these things. All you do in cinema is translate those ideas. They talk to you, so you just stay true to the idea and translate it as good as you can.
Recorded Hans Ulrich Obrist, AnOther Magazine, 16 January 2025 source ↗
Question What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you have ever made — of money, time, or energy? Money & investment
Absolutely. My friend Charlie Lutes said the most we can do for ourselves is to take that dive within twice a day, bringing out more and more of that consciousness within and that consciousness has qualities, qualities of intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy, power, peace. All these things you’re gonna get more and more of. You cannot lose.
Recorded Etan Ilfeld, The Etan Ilfeld Podcast / Watkins Magazine, Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT Magazine, 28 January 2025 source ↗

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