Forgetting. Or, worse yet, not recognizing who my real friends are.
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My distractibility, diminishing memory, and capacity for sustained concentration. My English master once said I had the brain of a butterfly. I feel that 40 years later, I’ve evolved into Dory from Finding Nemo.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, April 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 253 →
Joseph Fiennes
English actor
Picking my nose.
John Malkovich
American actor
How long do we have?
Taking myself seriously, even in a Vanity Fair quiz.
More from Helena Bonham Carter
View profile →My mother. She’s 85 and rather than diminishing with age, she keeps surprising and growing more marvelous. She finds fun when most are jaded, wonder when most are cynical, and is curious when most are bored. She gave me life and continues to show me how to live it daily. And I know that everyone who meets her thinks the same.
At the right time, and like my father—utterly without fear or pain, at home, with all whom I love. It was his last lesson as a parent to me.
In my bed, a hot-water bottle on my tummy, the windows are open, reading a book that I’m already into, chocolate at hand, all with the knowledge that everyone I love and know is happy.
The loss of anything, be it a loved one or a faculty—my sight, hearing, or mind.
Both of the days my children were born. It was like I’d stepped through a mirror and everything turned Technicolor.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Cybill Shepherd, David Lynch, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Geoffrey Rush, Matthew Modine, Pauline McLynn
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