Cybill Shepherd
American actress and former model
Dying in a plane crash and having somebody else get top billing.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
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.
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
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Paul Merson
English footballer and pundit
Going back to addiction.
Being murdered – I listen to too many true-crime podcasts.
John Malkovich
American actor
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
More from Harlan Coben
View profile →A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
With a wistful smile.
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Also answered this
Julian Clary, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kathy Lette, Christopher Hitchens, Cory Taylor
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