PE
After losing my mum still managing to finish drama school, because that was really difficult. I lost her in the first year.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗
The question
What accomplishment matters most to you?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 192 →
Stephen Dorff
American actor
My body of work and maybe the fact that I got famous young and I am still here and never ended up in a jail cell.
Elaine Paige
English singer and actress
To be working still.
Dominic West
English actor
Getting all four kids to school in the morning.
Watching all of Fellini’s movies one summer.
More from Paapa Essiedu
View profile →To find as many moments to laugh as possible.
I find it difficult to sit still.
In order to raise money to pay for myself to go to the National Youth Theatre, I performed a medley of my drama school speeches and some songs for my entire school. Considering I can’t sing, this was terrible. I did U Remind Me by Usher and Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. They paid £2 each – basically, to laugh at me.
Called me the N-word.
I would really love to know my parents as an adult. I lost my dad when I was 14 and my mum when I was 20.
I was a happy kid. I had quite a small life: I grew up in Walthamstow and didn’t really leave east London. I didn’t go to the South Bank for the first time until I was 18 years old.
More on craft & work
- What is the worst job you have ever had? 230 answers
- How do you tell when a piece of work is done? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively stuck? 63 answers
- How does a new piece of work usually begin for you? 60 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you typically do? 46 answers
- What part of your job would surprise outsiders because it takes up so much of your time? 41 answers
Also answered this
Omid Djalili, Robson Green, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Gemma Whelan, John Waters, Katherine Parkinson
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject