What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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.

Recorded Miriam Margolyes said elsewhere, not written here
I wanted to be a doctor, like my father.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 July 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.
Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗
Martin Sheen American actor
Golfer, priest, police officer, teacher and, after going to the movies, actor.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 March 2017 source ↗
Dan Stevens English actor
Jobs that I saw on television, until I realised they were all played by actors – then I wanted to be an actor.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 November 2017 source ↗
Toyah Willcox English singer-songwriter, actress and television presenter
A man. I have always fought against being gender specific. I just don’t like being identified as female: I’m a person.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 April 2019 source ↗

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