Julia Stiles
American actress
People I went to school with who have careers as doctors and teachers.
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's Q&A repeatedly uses this prompt, sometimes dropping 'living' while retaining the same comparative judgment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
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Pedro Almodóvar
Film director
Dr. Pedro Cavadas, a pioneer in face transplants and a specialist in the transplant of severed members. This surgeon from Valencia devotes his summer breaks to travel to Africa and tend to children who have been castrated in tribal conflicts.
Mario Molina
Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
there are really very many. Again, as a child, it was obviously those scientists which had lived in the past that had made such an important mark in science history.
Jacinda Ardern, the former New Zealand prime minister – for embodying a different, more compassionate politics.
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →When I first met Richard, in 1992, on a British Council writers’ tour of Adelaide. We were drinking Australian lager while parakeets squawked rudely in the neighbourhood gumtrees.
Like coming home.
Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
A cream suit from Chanel that cost almost as much as a small car.
The film of Restoration. A beautiful cast. An award-winning designer. A massive budget. A dog’s dinner.
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Paul Theroux, Judith Kerr, Carrie Fisher, Gok Wan, Mark Gatiss, Nadine Gordimer
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