Peter Sarsgaard: What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

The question

What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

Originally asked

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

A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

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

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

When I was first acting, in college, a relative came and saw me in Hedda Gabler and she said: “Look in the mirror, you’re not an actor. An actor looks like Mel Gibson.”

The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 February 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Toby Stephens

A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 June 2026 source ↗

Munroe Bergdorf

Apart from stuff on social media, an ex-partner telling me I’m unlovable.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 5 July 2025 source ↗

Nikki Amuka-Bird

In a rehearsal just after graduating from drama college, I say my lines to an older actor. He pauses, turns to the director and says: “I’m sorry, but is she going to do it like that?”

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 May 2025 source ↗

Michelle Collins

A radio presenter said I had yellow teeth – to my face. When I was 45, a manager in LA said I was too old to work in Hollywood; and then she rang my agent and said, “Can you tell your client never to wear that perfume again because it made me feel sick.”

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 April 2024 source ↗

More from Peter Sarsgaard

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Question What is the worst job you have ever had? Craft & work

Caddying for really rich people at this country club in Connecticut when I was a teenager. They would talk like I wasn’t there so I would hear all about their lives, their affairs and their stupidity, and yet I couldn’t say anything.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 February 2024 source ↗