Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 August 2018 source ↗
Cleaning toilets in a hotel in Croydon when I was 16. A guest once gave me a half-eaten bag of pistachios as a tip, so there were perks.
I’ve been lucky. When I was a kid, I babysat and was a lifeguard, which I didn’t hate; and then I was a teacher, which I liked.
In Brooklyn, I was a dishwasher in a sandwich shop.
It’s a toss-up between organising a new filing system at Hammersmith & Fulham social services and relying on tips in the least popular restaurant in London to get through drama school.
My collection of paintings. I have some by William Burroughs.
Relapsing. I usually spend eight, nine, 10 months sober, then I’ll spend a day relapsing and I get disappointed. But it never lasts too long. I get back up and try again.
An incredibly long one – maybe the entire St Matthew Passion – just so everybody would have to sit in the church for hours.
The public mistakes I’ve made. Most recently, I tried to light an e-cigarette on an aeroplane and was told to put it out. I completely forgot I was on a plane. I’d had, like, three drinks, but it only takes three. I stopped as soon as I got off and I got straight back into my programme, because that’s what I do.
As a complex and brilliant man.
Wanting to be better: a better actor, a better father.
Jennifer Hudson, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Ann Dowd, Adjoa Andoh, Carlos Acosta, Jessica Raine
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