Not winning Celebrity MasterChef. I am still gutted, despite many months of pretending to be fine with it.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Never to have played at the National or the RSC.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 July 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 369 →
Lena Headey
British actress
Realising that people are not always who they claim to be.
Shirley MacLaine
American actress and author
The reviews of my latest film.
Shaun White
American snowboarder and skateboarder
The first video game I was in. I was 13 and video games were the world for me, and my character was awful. He had this terrible orange 'fro, his voice was a man's and he was slow and didn't turn well – nothing like me.
More from Miriam Margolyes
View profile →On tour during Christmas vacation at Cambridge with its European Theatre Group, playing Shakespeare. I knew it was the best time of my life.
Every time I got a lucrative voiceover, I bought a picture. The most expensive was by James Gillray.
To experience the utter powerlessness of locked-in syndrome.
When the media, en masse, reported my imminent demise.
To my mother for disappointing her. Mummy wanted me to be a different sort of person from who I am, but one can’t change oneself.
Short. Fat. Jewish.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 205 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 124 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 124 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 77 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 39 answers
Also answered this
Olly Alexander, Jimmy Savile, Hayley Atwell, Chris Bryant, Johnny Flynn, Harriet Walter
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