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.
Fortunately, I’ve often been happy, which you wouldn’t necessarily guess from the roles I play. I’ve always been very happy to have my children with me, particularly on location. My daughter was in in London when I played Mary Stuart at the National Theatre.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 May 2018 source ↗
At the birth of each of my children. Drugs were involved.
When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.
Those years from 1953 to 1975 were extremely happy years for me. I did many adventurous activities. I got deeply involved in these aid programs for the people of the Himalayas. I had a nice family, we took our family into the out-of-doors, we camped and we swam and we clambered around the hills. For me, it was a very full and a very happy existence.
I am pretty chirpy at the moment.
A good film, a good book, a good script, a long phone call.
I dreamed of being an artistic skater. And a nursery nurse.
At each of my theatre premieres.
Pauline McLynn, Ice-T, Steve Pemberton, Alan Cumming, Nicholas Parsons, Samuel L Jackson
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