Aidan Gillen
Irish actor
Cleaning around the feet of John Malkovich with industrial carpet cleaner while he was trying to learn lines in the foyer of a theatre.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
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.
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 230 →In a Dagenham factory at 6am, picking soldiers’ greatcoats from wars around the world to sell at the market in Chelsea. I smelled like mothballs, and no one would come near me.
Harlan Coben
American author
I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
Bill Bailey
Comedian and musician
Telesales. I refused to wear a tie, but my argument that “They can’t see what we’re wearing” didn’t wash with the manager and I lasted a week.
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
We live in a fearful age: Brexit, Covid, global warming, cancel culture, war in Ukraine. Add in pancreatic cancer and you find me in an advanced and complex state of anxiety.
Like coming home.
A cream suit from Chanel that cost almost as much as a small car.
The film of Restoration. A beautiful cast. An award-winning designer. A massive budget. A dog’s dinner.
The only drink I really, really like is champagne.
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