The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I was in a car crash when I was 16, and I have a little scar on my face from smashing the passenger window with my head. If the car had rolled, I would have been dead.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 February 2019 source ↗
In the 1990s in New Jersey, being driven to a radio station early one morning. Our driver fell asleep and we were on the other side of a dual carriageway with cars coming at us. We all screamed and banged on the seat, and he woke up and pulled the car back across.
Undiagnosed VIPoma in 2018.
Despite a stroke, cancer as a child and various dramas with chainsaws and tractors, the closest was probably when I choked on a lamb chop 25 years ago. Sarah performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and the lamb shot out.
Nearly crashing into a train on one film, almost falling out of a hot-air balloon on another, narrowly avoiding getting knocked over by a taxi …
On my wedding day in Oxfordshire, six years ago.
Being a decent person.
Kind, fun and that I cared.
An actor – that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I went to stage school when I was 13.
I’d change my mindset and not be so hard on myself, and impart the knowledge that other people’s intentions aren’t always as well-meaning as my own.
Scraping plates in a fish and chip cafe in Whitby.
Peter Capaldi, Tom Ellis, Nicola Walker, David Jason, Rory Kinnear, Isabelle Huppert
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