The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?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.
A detective. Or a writer. Or a poet.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 June 2026 source ↗
A missionary in Africa – I think that was Sunday school-based.
First a horse rancher, then a dancer.
When I was very little, I thought it might be possible to be an angel.
I wanted to be a vet, and then realised it’s only really dogs that I adore, and if someone had a poorly mouse, I would be the one needing medical assistance.
A fellow artist called me a flaneur!
Needing order always.
Picking up RAF pilots’ parachute packs and gear they dropped off in a pile.
Trying to exercise authority over one.
In the 1950s I went to the Chelsea Arts Club’s New Year’s Eve ball at the Royal Albert Hall dressed as a Christmas pudding, with swimming trunks under my costume and holly in my hair.
The boozing. I started on rum as a child.
Adrian Edmondson, Anna Paquin, Rosanna Arquette, Olivia Williams, Richard Coles, Niamh Cusack
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