The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Composer, pirate, scientist, philosopher.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 July 2026 source ↗
An astronaut, a writer, a dancer.
A pilot or a ranger in the bush.
I had no idea. When I was a week away from leaving school, a teacher said, “We’ve been talking in the staffroom and we all think you should be an actor.” I thought, “That’s exactly what I want.” The rest is history.
First loved, then laid, then paid.
On a train journey to Arcadia many years ago while making a TV documentary.
Not being there for my daughter.
“You don’t stand a chance of succeeding as a writer in this country. The demographics are against you.” They were wrong. The only demographic that counts is the human heart.
Evolve or perish.
Alchemy. Love. Resilience.
Worrying at things.
Oti Mabuse, Ronnie Wood, Viv Albertine, Robert Bathurst, Emeli Sandé, Floella Benjamin
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