Ed Harris
American actor and director
Don't let MGM distribute a film you care about.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
To be humble is to be sane.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 March 2008 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 137 →Try not to take yourself too seriously.
Maurice Sendak
Children's author and illustrator
Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. ... But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.
Recorded
Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR — recorded by telephone in September 2011, his last interview, 20 September 2011
source ↗
Clive James
Critic, essayist, poet and broadcaster
I think I actually wrote it in one of my poems is that my decline has been the making of me - I forget how I put it. Yeah, simply more reflective. I haven't got the excuse of moving forward just on impulse anymore, which I did, I think, for a long, long time.
More from Erin O'Connor
View profile →An electric-yellow mohair rug.
Appearing on a Paris catwalk in a beard.
An emergency landing in a snow storm in Philadelphia.
As a little bit naughty and a lot nice.
Shooting hosiery on top of an iceberg and getting my backside stuck to it.
Learning to surf - a 6ft frame is a real hindrance for the sport.
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Also answered this
John Simm, Sarah Perry, Richard Coles, Roger McGough, Jack Davenport, Tony Judt
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