The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
On stage. Always on stage. God that’s depressing, isn’t it?
The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 December 2023 source ↗
The morning after the opening of Hamlet in New York in 2000. The reviews were good and I actually punched the air – a very un-Simon Russell Beale thing to do.
When I was a child and a teenager, before I got discovered.
Nothing is better than right now, and having a baby is no small part.
The night my daughter was born, New York, December 29, 1997. After she emerged and I held her in the palm of my hand, I walked around Manhattan in a stupor of happiness.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to insult you, but did you know you look a bit like that actress Siobhán McSweeney?”
Politics. And casting directors.
Being loved by my family and friends despite my personality.
So many. I have been very cowardly in the past, and it came across as me not caring, when the opposite was true.
My impotence in the face of war.
Physically, falling off my bike two years ago. Emotionally, when my mother died when I was 27.
David Gandy, Rob Brydon, Shaun Ryder, Hilary Swank, Boy George, Eddie Izzard
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