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.
That we’re all going to hell in a handcart and Trump is driving.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 5 April 2025 source ↗
Spiders, needles, blood, pain and breaking wind in public.
Generally? Hurting someone’s feelings. Specifically? Being kidnapped while on vacation.
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
That I will suddenly lose my sense of humor, and everyone knows it but me.
Instead of saying, “I tripped up”, you have to use the words, “I had a fall.”
Like a warm velvet glove.
I did an interview years ago and, after it finished, I made some passing comment about sex getting better as you get older – and they used that as the headline. The day the paper came out, I was in a restaurant with the family when a woman on the table next to me leaned over and said, in a sultry voice, “I read your article this morning.”
David Attenborough, because he introduced me to the world.
Lack of empathy.
A loving father and wonderful husband, and the best actor of my generation!
Michael Flatley, John Malkovich, Mike Skinner, Olivia de Havilland, Bear Grylls, Maureen O'Hara
Search the directory for somebody in particular.