Cybill Shepherd
American actress and former model
Dying in a plane crash and having somebody else get top billing.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
My children dying before me.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Danielle Steel
Novelist
Losing another child. (I lost one of my sons to suicide when he was 19.)
Lack of purpose.
Eugene Levy
Actor and writer
Being on a Broadway stage and forgetting what the play is.
More from Keith McNally
View profile →Taking an overnight train in Europe.
Using knowledge as a weapon.
Craving the kind of success I pretend to despise.
Cycling around Martha’s Vineyard alone in the summer of 1976.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Gino D'Acampo, Ina Garten, Bobbi Brown, Martha Stewart, Warren Buffett, Christian Louboutin
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject