David Hare
Playwright and screenwriter
Because I loved it when I was young.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Money & investment
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
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.
I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 April 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
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Dominic West
English actor
I wanted to race cars.
Mathew Horne
English actor
I wanted to be a prosthetic makeup artist after watching A Nightmare On Elm Street.
I wanted to be a doctor, like my father.
More from Malcolm Gladwell
View profile →As a writer who took cheering up his listeners seriously.
I was a reporter for many years at the Washington Post. Although I loved every minute, I don’t think I was a very good reporter.
Probably a piece of music. I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno called Another Green World, which is one of his early ‘70s, it’s ambient music, but not the kind of really weird ambient music. There’s an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18, I think it’s 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. ... Well, I discovered that when I was 18. And I sing the songs of that album in my head all of the time. And I worship Brian Eno.
Kiss And Say Goodbye by the Manhattans.
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