Clothes moths (and the imminent threat of world war three).
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
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.
I’ve a phobia of statues. It does go back to childhood. My parents brought me to look at a French church late at night. Since then I can’t deal with them.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 June 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 265 →
Marina Abramović
Performance artist
To be eaten by a shark.
Dying too young, and spiders.
It’s a toss-up between a tarantula crawling on me and dying alone.
More from Philippa Dunne
View profile →An actor. I watched a lot of TV because we lived in the countryside and the weather was so bad.
A wedding ring.
My mother, because when I’m stressed, I can be really horrible to her.
I started my career not getting jobs, but then you learn that 95% of this job is not getting jobs, and you just have to make peace with it.
You are your own greatest asset.
Someone once saw me in a play and said that I was disgusting.
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Also answered this
Harlan Coben, Tuppence Middleton, Takashi Murakami, Laurie Metcalf, Toby Stephens, Zack Polanski
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