Rupert Graves
English actor
I started playing football too old.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My brother Pete passing on in 2005.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
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Andi Oliver
British cook, television and radio broadcaster, singer
The fact that I didn’t get more success in the music industry.
Sadiq Khan
Mayor of London since 2016
Labour losing the 2015 election: we weren’t able to help the people who needed us most.
For my dad not to have known our boys.
More from Kevin Rowland
View profile →My dad said, “You’re going nowhere.” I was seven or eight.
Gerry Adams, because he’s got incredible integrity and vision, and he’s had to put up with so much flak.
I’d have stuck with the original Dexys Midnight Runners look we started in 1978, which became known as the New Romantic look a couple of years later. Our management and record label talked us out of it. Later, Duran Duran and Spandau came out with that look and that made us look old-fashioned.
On stage – the Old Vic in 1981 and Glastonbury last year.
Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – I think that’s true.
Insanity. I am on a recovery programme – clean from drugs and drink for many years – and if I stopped doing all that stuff I’d go crazy pretty quick and pick up drugs again, because I was a real fucking addict.
More on failure & regret
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- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
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Robbie Williams, Jo Nesbø, Mandy Patinkin, Rick Astley, Roger Taylor, Lisa Marie Presley
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