Carlos Acosta: If you could edit your past, what would you change?

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Carlos Acosta said elsewhere, not written here

The time I told my father I hated him, causing him a lot of pain. He passed away six years ago, and my mother eight years ago.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 September 2018 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Felicity Jones British actress

I wouldn’t change anything. Life is what it is, you just have to get on with it.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 May 2023 source ↗

Laura Kenny English cyclist

I would have spent every single day with my sister before she left to live in New Zealand. At my wedding, it was the first time I had seen her in two and a half years.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 January 2017 source ↗

Adrian Edmondson English actor, comedian, musician and writer

I practise stoicism. Not the stiff-upper-lip, modern stuff, but the ancient Greek philosophy. You have to accept what you can’t change. I try to face forwards all the time. When that doesn’t work, I think about buying a machine gun.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 July 2018 source ↗

Julia Stiles American actress

I’d have been less precocious as a child (you grow up fast in New York). I’d have prolonged the naivety.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 July 2015 source ↗

More from Carlos Acosta

View profile →

Question Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought? Money & investment

A 1955 Jaguar XK120. It was not in very good condition and, little by little, I brought it back to its former splendour.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 September 2018 source ↗

Question How close have you come to death? Death & what remains

In 1989, in Cuba, about to board a plane for Milan, where I was going to school for a year. The visa didn’t arrive in time, so I couldn’t board. The plane crashed and people died.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 September 2018 source ↗