Rhys Ifans
Welsh actor and musician
To anyone I’ve unintentionally hurt or upset.
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 April 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 209 →My father, with whom I had a complex relationship: often, when I was young, his desire to protect me clashed with the stubbornness of my choices.
Monty Don
English horticulturist, broadcaster, and writer
My children. I was away an awful lot when they were little and not very good at being a father when I was around. I could have done better.
Lionel Shriver
American author
He knows who he is. I’ve apologised. I wish it made more difference.
More from Douglas Stuart
View profile →At a fashion show after-party in New York in 2004, my friend dared me to push her into the pool. I did, and you’ve never heard laughter die so quickly.
My mother and my brother would still be alive. So much of my life has been coping with the grief of losing them.
My creative freedom. I was the creative director of a large fashion brand when I packed it all in to pursue my writing.
The summer of 1997. My husband, who is an American, gave up everything to come and live with me in Edinburgh when we were students, and we were so skint but we had so much fun.
People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.
When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 219 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 61 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Bella Freud, Katharine Hamnett, Terence Conran, Warren Buffett, Adam Clayton, Adam Peaty
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All failure & regret questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject