Laurie Metcalf: What do you fear most?

The question

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.

Laurie Metcalf

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

Anything underneath me in water I can’t see to the bottom of.

Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, February 2018 source ↗

Others on this question

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Gregory Porter

Immunity to cruelty.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2025 source ↗

Midge Ure

Apathy, either from an audience, the people around me or myself.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 September 2023 source ↗

Rafael Nadal Spanish professional tennis player, 2001–2024

I don’t think I have one in particular. I am pretty calm. Just some small things that I better not comment on :-).

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, October 2010 source ↗

Roger Ebert Film critic

Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things.

Recorded Excerpt from Life Itself: A Memoir, published by Salon, 15 September 2011 source ↗