I fell off a ladder, landed on my back, got up and was fine.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 May 2018 source ↗
The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
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Others on this question
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Maggie O'Farrell
Irish-British novelist
How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.
Robert Carlyle
Scottish actor
I was on a plane in India and I thought it was going to crash. It was an old, rickety thing. It was pre-children - I wouldn't do it now.
Paapa Essiedu
British actor
In 2016, the moment my agent rang me to tell me I’d got the part of Hamlet for the RSC. While I was on the phone, I looked to my left and turned to the right, and a bus whizzed by and the wing mirror was so close to me that it knocked my hat off.
Julia Ormond
English actress
A trip to a Macedonian refugee camp that I switched out of, to go at a later date. Those who took my place were killed in a horrific car accident.
More from Adeel Akhtar
View profile →A snazzy coffee machine that grinds beans and steams milk.
In Brooklyn, I was a dishwasher in a sandwich shop.
After I got arrested, my dad, a lawyer, took me to a QC to try to build a case against the FBI. The dejection on his face when it became obvious that we couldn’t was disappointing.
My mum, because she smuggled me into the National Youth Theatre during summer time when my dad didn’t want me to be an actor, and she’s seen everything I’ve done.
At boarding school, I was unable to get the main part in Hamlet, so I put on a production of The Homecoming with my friends. The teachers came to see it and said they didn’t know I had it in me. It felt very good.
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