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.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 April 2026 source ↗
I was nearly hit by an enormous gold-fibreglass cherub in a shopping centre. It fell five storeys and smashed into a thousand pieces about 4ft away from me.
After the war, when I was about nine, we were held up in our home. The robbers grabbed my father and had a gun at his throat. It was terrifying. My mother got a wad of money and gave it to the people, and they ran away.
I was on a cliff in Dartmoor, doing a Royal Marine abseil. I fell upside down and thought, “I’m going to die here.”
About five years ago, a half-tonne tree branch fell and missed me by three feet.
I had a casting director once stop me in the middle of an audition and tell me to go wash my face in the bathroom because she felt my makeup was too distracting, but I wasn’t wearing any. It was mortifying. It felt like a power play and I was so young, I didn’t know what to do.
My tendency to be avoidant.
When I realised that I could get myself through anything that came my way.
Being alive on Earth is challenging and I like to believe that whatever happens after is filled with peace and ease.
To myself for diminishing my gut feelings until quite recently.
All of the anxious thoughts that you are able to escape during the day that somehow know when you are lying down to relax.
Justin Hawkins, Anita Rani, Rory Kinnear, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Miriam Margolyes, Liev Schreiber
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