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.
A pearl diver in Japan.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 May 2025 source ↗
A great composer. I wrote to Benjamin Britten to tell him this and that he was my third favourite composer. For some reason he didn’t feel moved to reply.
A barrister, a vet or a singer.
An actor. Then I grew out of that and became one by default. Or sort of one: “Not really an actor”, said Michael Billington.
At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.
You have to go to the end of the line.
Shucking oysters one summer in Nice.
One handsome dude.
People not remembering who I am.
Is that the final mix?
Signing away the rights to my life story to a major motion-picture company for a sum that I have since been told was way below the market rate.
Gloria Estefan, Katherine Parkinson, Ralph Ineson, Nish Kumar, Jess Phillips, Alex Hassell
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