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Dancing was in my bones from when I started ballet at two.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 June 2018 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Johanna Konta
British tennis player
When I was five, I wanted to be a cleaning lady; when I was nine, I wanted to be the world’s number one tennis player.
Jeremy Deller
English artist
More successful with girls.
Niamh Cusack
Irish actress
A saint. Then a ballerina.
Malcolm Gladwell
Staff writer at The New Yorker; author of The Tipping Point and Outliers
I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.
More from Shirley Ballas
View profile →People close to me throwing me under a bus for a crust.
I would be much more available for my brother when he was not well and try to understand more about mental health, which I didn’t know anything about at the time.
Getting the job on Strictly at the age of 56.
When I found out that I was having my baby. They told me I was having a little girl and I named it Elizabeth. Then, when the baby was born it was my beautiful boy, Mark.
We’ve Only Just Begun by The Carpenters.
In my dreams: I’ll feel as if I am falling towards a white light and then suddenly I wake up.
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