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 ballet dancer.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 May 2025 source ↗
Dancing was in my bones from when I started ballet at two.
When I was a child, it was a bus driver or engine driver; then, when I was a teenager, I went to the theatre and wanted to be an actor.
I was fidgety and clueless for a long time.
J-Lo, a foreign correspondent and, at uni, I assumed that someone would tap me on the shoulder and ask me to be in MI6, but it never happened.
“And for you, sir?” It happens a lot.
Not knowing who my family are.
Nick Cave for his determination to hold a space for public discourse on the deep and difficult and mysterious elements of life.
High-functioning introvert.
When I decided that Mavis Staples was right – I don’t need to despise myself.
Not standing up to bullies.
Mark Radcliffe, Floella Benjamin, Samuel West, Stockard Channing, Gloria Steinem, Mellody Hobson
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