Robert Carlyle
Scottish actor
Becoming an actor at all, considering my background.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Question
What scares you about getting older?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
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.
My kids, and getting some of the stories I had in my head on to paper in a way that wasn’t too far removed from the thing I dreamed about writing.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Jenny Agutter
English actress
Work-wise, joining the National Theatre when I was 21.
Now that I’m at this end of my career, I’m gobsmacked that I’ve managed to cling on for as long as I have.
Michael Ball
English singer, presenter and actor
I am pretty proud of having got Aspects of Love back into the West End.
More from Neil Gaiman
View profile →Mostly the pain. I don’t want to be trapped in a body that hurts.
I’ve never read Proust.
I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.
The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.
The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.
Imaginative, dull, amiable.
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- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 47 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 42 answers
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Siri Hustvedt, Mark Gatiss, Irvine Welsh, Salman Rushdie, Nicholson Baker, Fran Lebowitz
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