Samuel West: If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?

The question

If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Samuel West

British actor, theatre director, and narrator

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I’d have done everything earlier and with more style.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 October 2020 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Sandi Toksvig Danish and British broadcaster, comedian and writer

I wouldn’t bother learning how to use logarithms, and I might give netball a miss.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 March 2018 source ↗

Adrian Scarborough British actor

The first 12 years of school. I was very unhappy. I was not academic, so I played the fool till I was 16.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 February 2022 source ↗

Steve Jobs Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

But the market was changing. The industry was changing. The scale was changing. And in the end we knew we would be either the last company to make it or the first to not make it. We were right on the edge. We thought we would be the last one that made it, but we were wrong. We were the first one that didn't. We put an end to the companies that tried to do that. We certainly made our fair share of mistakes, but in the end I think we should have taken a bit longer to realize the world was changing and just gone on to be a software company right off the bat.

Recorded Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗

Bear Grylls