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 fighter pilot.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 March 2026 source ↗
I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.
A paediatrician, then I was like, I can’t dissect frogs! Then I fell in love with making things and understanding how things work.
Successful like my two uncles, who were paper industry magnates.
An actor or a nun.
Like I would die for them in a nanosecond.
My aeroplane, a Diamond DA42. It’s a twin-engine aircraft and I bought her brand new to fly around the world solo. Very sadly my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer about six weeks before I was due to take off, in May 2017, and she died early June. After that, I lost interest in doing it.
I still say yes to too many things.
Independent, curious and funny.
There are one or two relationships where I’d see the red flags much earlier.
Living in a campervan for a week with Timmy Mallett for a children’s TV show about 40 years ago.
Lee Child, Esther Rantzen, Jack Davenport, Kate Humble, Jon Sopel, Shirley Manson
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