Trying to exercise authority over one.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
What do you value most in your friends?
Relationships
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Lying. Let’s not call it “untruthful.” Or “factually inaccurate.” I don’t even call it bullshit, because I like bulls. And bulls need to shit. So you can’t hold that against them. Let’s call it what it is: lying.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, June 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Douglas Stuart
Scottish fashion designer and novelist
People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.
Incompetent leadership.
People who aren’t polite.
More from Kevin Bacon
View profile →They want nothing but friendship.
Food in a sink drain.
Before I knew what being an actor was, I wanted to be one.
I can’t stand the way my voice will crack if I’m making a speech. I hate public speaking and the emotion it dredges up.
A family dinner. Candlelight. Lots of laughs.
My wife – for her intelligence, talent, ability to survive this business and be such a fantastic mother to our two kids. (Of course, I have to say that, because she’s sitting right here.)
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 406 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 79 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 30 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 14 answers
- What is the most overrated virtue? 10 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 9 answers
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Fiona Allen, David Chang, Tina Turner, Norman Lear, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, Elmore Leonard
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