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.
An eye surgeon. I had an operation on my cornea when I was little, and remember being deeply enamoured with the team who looked after me. Subsequently, I was very disappointed to learn that a degree of scientific aptitude was required for the job, which ruled me out.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 October 2018 source ↗
A fishmonger, then a surgeon.
As a child, Munro was constantly telling herself stories. One of the first was “The Little Mermaid,” by Hans Christian Anderson, whose ending she couldn’t bear.
In 1975, I watched the film Stardust, and Adam Faith said, “I supply the birds, the pills and the pot.” And I thought, “I want that.”
I had no idea. When I was a week away from leaving school, a teacher said, “We’ve been talking in the staffroom and we all think you should be an actor.” I thought, “That’s exactly what I want.” The rest is history.
Cleaning toilets in a hotel in Croydon when I was 16. A guest once gave me a half-eaten bag of pistachios as a tip, so there were perks.
In my 20s, touring small arts centres with my best mate, performing sketch comedy to a handful of people.
Anna dared me to jump off a cliff in Menorca on holiday a couple of years ago. I did. I fell 30m through the air, hit the water at an odd angle and shattered my coccyx.
Not accepting every dare.
Shirley MacLaine, Rosanna Arquette, Olivia Williams, Niamh Cusack, Adrian Edmondson, Anna Paquin
Search the directory for somebody in particular.