The question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?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.
As a kid I used to fantasize about being Clayton Moore, the masked hero in The Lone Ranger. I’m much too old to play him now – I’d have to be the baddie who he kills – although I do have a horse as King Arthur, well someone clopping along behind me with a pair of coconuts.
20 Questions With …, WhatsOnStage, 10 March 2008 source ↗
Jobs that I saw on television, until I realised they were all played by actors – then I wanted to be an actor.
A hairdresser – I still want to be a hairdresser.
To be blonde. It was just my ambition in life. Just to be blonde.
Donny Osmond’s wife. Still do.
I have never been happier than I am now. As for when I was happiest in my work, playing King Arthur in Spamalot in the West End.
Every bad thing that’s happened, apart from Mum and Dad dying, it’s always led to something better. Always.
I don't like people who are selfish.
I spent years trying to work out the secret of acting. I read all the books by the great teachers and got nowhere. They were so busy making it sound complex. I just couldn’t figure it out. Then one day my acting coach in LA told me to ‘think before you act’. It was so simple – when you are acting don’t just speak the words, but concentrate and think about what you are going to say all the time. It worked for me.
My tendency to be inappropriate.
Retiring from playing rugby.
Jenna Coleman, Brendan Gleeson, Hayley Atwell, Harriet Walter, Felicity Jones, Jessica Brown Findlay
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