JS
Outliving my kids – and rats.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 March 2023 source ↗
The question
What do you fear most?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.
Others on this question
View all 256 →
David Hasselhoff
American actor, singer, and television personality
Not working and not being able to continue to live this lifestyle.
Dying with a feeling of incompleteness.
Maureen O'Hara
Irish and American actress and singer
Not getting into heaven.
John Waters
American filmmaker
Losing my mind and not knowing it.
More from John Simm
View profile →After the birth of both my children, although Manchester United winning the treble in 1999 came pretty close.
Going to pieces while meeting John Squire, the lead guitarist of the Stone Roses, backstage after a gig. I completely lost the ability to speak. I told him I had the same guitars as he’d just used on stage, and when he asked me which ones, the words completely went out of my head and there was a huge pause, and then his wife tapped his shoulder and he wandered off.
Arrogance, bullying, meanness – just try to be kind, it’s not difficult.
Working in a very busy bar in the West End when I was trying to pay my way through drama school. I had to dance in a cage in a vest and cycling shorts to Venus by Bananarama, Greased Lightnin’ and Y.M.C.A. every night. It was excruciating.
A couple of years ago we moved to East Sussex – I had been living in London for 35 years – and couldn’t work out why I kept waking up and thinking, what’s that sound? It was actually silence.
Live in the moment. Enjoy life because time cruelly speeds up as you get older and becomes scarily finite.
More on identity & self
- Which trait in yourself do you like least? 239 answers
- As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself? 197 answers
- What most recently moved you to tears? 192 answers
- What does happiness look like for you when life is going well? 158 answers
- How would you sum yourself up in three words? 114 answers
- What fills you with the most pride? 103 answers
Also answered this
Daryl McCormack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jack Whitehall, Carrie Fisher, Angela Griffin, Alison Steadman
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject