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.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 September 2025 source ↗
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
How many times I could have died before now, and in how many different ways. And yet I came close only once: a speeding sedan ran a red light, hit three other vehicles, and jack-knifed into my rear wheel split second after I’d stepped out of my parked car. A bystander described the scene to me later. “You were a millimetre away from losing your legs,” he said.
In 2012 I stared into the eyes of someone who had just stabbed a man in the neck on the street. I was trying to help the victim; for a very long three or four seconds, I thought he was going to come for me next.
I broke both my legs in a hit-and run accident when I was 26.
Last year, during four days in January, when I directed Rhoda, my second short film, in a tiny house in Camberwell with Juliet Stevenson and Emma D’Arcy.
Ponderous, over thinking.
Not getting to the point.
I woke up this morning thinking maybe I don’t want to be an actor any more, then I had breakfast and I thought: actually, no, I really like being an actor.
I spent about five years living in Paris thinking I would become Kristin Scott Thomas, and it didn’t happen.
A receding hairline.
Sofia Helin, Mike Skinner, Clara Amfo, Mathew Horne, Rita Wilson, David Hasselhoff
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