John Lithgow: What trait do you most dislike in other people?

The question

What trait do you most dislike in other people?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

John Lithgow

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

Three versions of the same trait: deceit, hypocrisy, and manipulativeness.

Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, October 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Timothy Hutton

An arbitrary contrarian.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, March 2015 source ↗

Hugh Skinner

Snobbishness, superiority, condescension.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 May 2026 source ↗

Joyce Carol Oates Novelist, short story writer and essayist

Amid so much blatant cruelty in our political situation, such shocking indifference to the lives & welfare of those living at the margins of an affluent society, I think it must be this institutionalized cruelty, & the hypocrisy that surrounds it. “Making America great again”—for whom? Wealthy white people? The word “deplore” is particularly relevant here.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2018 source ↗

Adrian Dunbar Irish actor