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 comedian, and I may have achieved that.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 December 2024 source ↗
A DJ. I still do.
I was a huge daydreamer and imagined myself as a successful general leading his troops into battle.
A surgeon. I studied pre-med in Holy Cross College for four years and then I went to acting school.
I really had no idea whatsoever. I feel that my life developed as I went along. I was never one of those people who, at an early age, had picked an objective and worked steadily towards it. All I knew was that I wanted to get involved in adventurous activity. I didn’t have any specific type of activity in mind, but I wanted to do things that were exciting and adventurous. I had a fairly diffused feeling as to what precisely it should be.
A good understanding of how to use a computer.
In 1992 I was in New York, and somebody showed me a work by Louise Bourgeois. I never realised that sculpture could move me, and I was so affected by this piece that I bought it. It was a lot of money.
A headmaster said I was a complete washout and I would never be any good for anything.
The best possible understanding of who they are and where they came from.
As someone who added to a situation rather than took away from it.
When I was drinking, there were many times when I was out for the night and didn’t come back for a week.
Hayley Squires, Louis Walsh, Mariella Frostrup, Victoria Pendleton, Matt Goss, Toyah Willcox
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