People finding out my greatest fear.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My children dying before me.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 255 →
John Malkovich
American actor
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
Jack Whitehall
English comedian, actor, presenter and writer
Turning into my father.
Marina Abramović
Performance artist
To be eaten by a shark.
More from Keith McNally
View profile →Taking an overnight train in Europe.
Craving the kind of success I pretend to despise.
Using knowledge as a weapon.
Cycling around Martha’s Vineyard alone in the summer of 1976.
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