Louis Theroux
British and American journalist and author
There was a period in the early 2000s when I had been doing celebrity profiles and thought I’d lost my way creatively.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
Pressing uniforms in a laundry. I was 14. I lied about my age and said I was 16, even though I probably looked about 12.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 February 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →
Adeel Akhtar
British actor
In Brooklyn, I was a dishwasher in a sandwich shop.
Peter Capaldi
Actor and director
I have been pretty terrible in quite a lot of terrible things.
Kim Wilde
English pop singer
I’ve always enjoyed all my jobs, whether it was cleaning the stairs for my piano teacher or working at Lister hospital one summer.
More from Paterson Joseph
View profile →A private detective.
I wouldn’t live so long in France. After eight years, I came back to London.
When my son was about three years old and I was working at the National Theatre. I remember cycling from Twickenham, and thinking, “This is the golden age: I’ll never be happier or more content than this.”
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 190 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 66 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 61 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 46 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 40 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Adeel Akhtar, Adjoa Andoh, Adrian Dunbar, Adrian Edmondson, Aidan Gillen, Alison Steadman
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject