Terry O'Neill
British photographer
A jazz drummer.
Identity & self
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
195 answers answered between 1930 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A
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.
On the record
Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.
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Technology 1
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Read by age
Any age
Before thirty 3
In their thirties 33
In their forties 36
In their fifties 50
In their sixties 43
Seventy and beyond 25
Gloria Steinem
Writer and feminist organiser
First a horse rancher, then a dancer.
Martin Sheen
American actor
Golfer, priest, police officer, teacher and, after going to the movies, actor.
Edward Fox
British actor
To be able to play the piano like Artur Schnabel.
Shirley MacLaine
American actress and author
At three, I knew I was too tall to be a ballerina, so that wasn’t going to happen.
Ronnie Wood
English rock musician
An artist travelling and playing with the Stones.
John Prescott
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007
A trade union official.
Patricia Hodge
English actress
A ballet dancer, but it changed to being an actress when I got put in a school play.
Engelbert Humperdinck
British singer
A saxophonist, but destiny chose another path for me, and I’m glad it happened that way.
Armistead Maupin
American writer
Not a lawyer, which was what I told everyone, because my father wanted me to be one.
Julie Andrews
English actress, singer and author
A botanist or a florist.
Björn Ulvaeus
Swedish musician
Successful like my two uncles, who were paper industry magnates.
Salman Rushdie
Indian-British-American novelist
A writer, I’m sorry to say. Boring, I know, but true.
Madhur Jaffrey
Actress, cook, and TV host
A doctor, a painter, an actress.
James Dyson
British inventor and businessman
I had no idea whatsoever, and nor did anyone else. I thought I’d go to art school and see whether I liked it – and of course I did, and stayed.
Julian Lloyd Webber
British cellist and conductor
A detective, a train driver on the underground and Leyton Orient’s centre forward.
A teacher and a nightclub singer.
Marina Abramović
Performance artist
Exactly what I am now.
I was a huge daydreamer and imagined myself as a successful general leading his troops into battle.
A pearl diver in Japan.
1 answer from members
@aliabbasi
builder
A pilot