Hayley Atwell: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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 Hayley Atwell said elsewhere, not written here

An adult, as quickly as possible. I wasn’t built for the psychological warfare of the playground.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 December 2018 source ↗

Others on this question

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Jared Harris

I remember really wanting to go into space. I liked the idea of flying.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 February 2025 source ↗

Warwick Davis English actor

I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2017 source ↗

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 ↗

Matt Goss English singer-songwriter