JK
When I was five, I wanted to be a cleaning lady; when I was nine, I wanted to be the world’s number one tennis player.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 June 2018 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Orlando Bloom
English actor
An actor or stuntman: I loved Lee Majors in The Fall Guy.
Gino D'Acampo
Italian-British celebrity chef and media personality
I wanted to be a footballer at first, like any other Neapolitan kid.
An artist, an interior designer and a vet.
Bertie Carvel
British actor
Luke Skywalker, for a time. After that, I mainly wanted to have a girlfriend one day.
More from Johanna Konta
View profile →Like when you get the giggles in a room full of people where you should be quiet.
My parents, because they did what they did to give me the opportunities to do what I do. They left their lives behind in Australia and started again in their 40s in a new country.
When I was a young girl in Sydney, I used to go running with my dad. I would wake him up at the crack of dawn and we had this route to the top of a golf course – we’d usually make it there for sunrise.
Being happy. I think that transcends the results of my matches, the so-called successes or failures. How would you like to be remembered? As someone who dedicated their life to what they were doing at the time. Right now, it’s tennis, but I want to have the same dedication for whatever I do after, whether it be motherhood or another career.
More on identity & self
- What do you fear most? 256 answers
- Which trait in yourself do you like least? 239 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
Ivan Lendl, Mo Farah, Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy, Serena Williams, Yogi Berra
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject