Robert Carlyle: How close have you come to death?

Originally asked

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

A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

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

Recorded Robert Carlyle said elsewhere, not written here

I was on a plane in India and I thought it was going to crash. It was an old, rickety thing. It was pre-children - I wouldn't do it now.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 February 2008 source ↗

Others on this question

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Tuppence Middleton

Doing a compulsory standup routine in my first week of drama school.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 May 2026 source ↗

Penny Lancaster

In a different sense, I’ve helped to try to resuscitate a dead man.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 September 2025 source ↗

Dan Stevens English actor

Probably on a Los Angeles freeway.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 November 2017 source ↗

Diana Athill Editor and memoirist

So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗