With Alexander's cancer, I was definitely brought to my knees for the first time because of the fear factor.
N/A, N/A, FixQuotes, 15 January 2026 source ↗
The question
What is your greatest fear?Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
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Ben Kingsley
English actor
Loss.
I fear the arrogance we are all at risk of, the pride that pushes us to put “I” in place of “God”. More prosaically, I fear physical pain because it risks stripping us of our dignity.
Heights. I love being high, but I don’t like being up high.
Dying alone and in pain.
More from Cathy Freeman
View profile →I was going to shave it. It went in two parts. I got a bob first but it kept falling all over my face. Then it was off, short. The main reason it was long was because my mother cut it short when I was little and I was trying to make up for that.
I like being in the workforce; it keeps me grounded.
With Alexander's cancer, I was definitely brought to my knees for the first time because of the fear factor.
But I was not really planning to create what seems to be a lasting impact. I was just always about personal expression and pride in who I was as an Australian Indigenous girl. It was more about me sharing all of me with the world. But, certainly after all these years, it makes me really proud.
Recorded
Euan Crumley, Interview marking 25 years since the Sydney 2000 400m final, Athletics Weekly, 22 September 2025
source ↗
I like being in the workforce; it keeps me grounded.
I like being in the workforce; it keeps me grounded.
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