The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Professional footballer for Tottenham, or train driver.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗
Not a lawyer, which was what I told everyone, because my father wanted me to be one.
I had no idea whatsoever, and nor did anyone else. I thought I’d go to art school and see whether I liked it – and of course I did, and stayed.
I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.
First, I wanted to be a historian, then a drummer, and after that I just wanted to be employed. And I still do.
Arrogance and narcissism.
Warm and embracing.
We become fertiliser.
Children’s underwear department at Marks & Spencer, Oxford Circus. I was 16 years old, earning money in my summer holidays.
Funny, impatient, annoying.
I’ve had motorcycle accidents – I had one where I ended up in intensive care. But if you are on a frontline – which I have been – and people start shooting at you – which they have done – you put yourself in quite considerable danger. So: on a moving frontline in northern Afghanistan in 2001.
Robert Peston, Zack Polanski, Jess Phillips, Malcolm Gladwell, Desmond Tutu, Gloria Steinem
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