The question
What do you fear most?Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Every actor has the same fear – ie, you’re never going to work again.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 August 2026 source ↗
I’ve got vertigo, so anything to do with heights.
I’m quite scared of bats. I’m just seeing rats with wings – no, thanks.
I’ve a phobia of statues. It does go back to childhood. My parents brought me to look at a French church late at night. Since then I can’t deal with them.
Overcooking pasta for my Italian family in Napoli – they would kill me.
Not playing James Bond.
My first wife, because I left her.
I cry all the time in front of the telly. I was doing Gogglebox with Julian Clary recently and I cried watching The Piano.
That’s the 64-million-dollar question.
I was about six years old in a market square in Italy and my dad said, “Oh, those shorts would look perfect on you.” So he whipped my trousers off and I hadn’t got any knickers on.
The king – because he’s been through quite a bit and I think he’s come out the other side brilliantly.
Mark Radcliffe, James Taylor, Roger Ebert, Allison Janney, Stockard Channing, Jane Fonda
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