Oversensitivity.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 December 2023 source ↗
The question
Which trait in yourself do you like least?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Oversensitivity.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 December 2023 source ↗
Being a bit mean now and again, too impetuous, snappy, bit of a temper.
Procrastination.
I can be properly stubborn sometimes – but that’s me being a classic Leo.
I’m rabidly indiscreet. If you tell me an embarrassing story, it will probably end up in one of my scripts or standup routines.
I was a waitress at a holiday camp. On a Wednesday afternoon all the guys used to pee into the rice pudding and we had to serve it to the customers.
The people I hurt when I was suffering with addiction to alcohol and cocaine.
Now, because of my marriage and because since September 2019 I’ve been free of clinical depression.
Funny, annoying and kind.
Shitting myself in New York last November. I was wearing cream trousers. We were going to see my son Matty and his band, the 1975, at Madison Square Garden, and I was walking through the streets, enjoying the sunshine, pretending I was in some kind of video – throwing my hat into the New York sky like Mary Tyler Moore. I saw a couple of people turn and look at me. Now, although I’m not famous in New York, whenever Matty’s there I do get recognised as his mum, so I’m smiling and waving at them. I went back to the hotel room and bent over to get something out of the suitcase, and my husband said: “Do you realise you’ve shat yourself?”
Stopping being such a helicopter parent and worrying about these grownup children’s lives. It drives me mad. And I am having therapy. If I could stop thinking that I should be their first port of call for everything, it would free my head up a bit.
Sofia Coppola, Ben Okri, Alex Hassell, Adrian Dunbar, Helena Bonham Carter, Helen Mirren
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