Not playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. I am a huge Brando fan and a big Tennessee Williams fan and it’s a part I would love to have a go at. It’s possible I still could but I’m too old, really.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 October 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 372 →
Paul Theroux
American travel writer and novelist
Political leadership generally.
Ruth Jones
Welsh actress, producer, and writer
The Guardian’s review of my book.
Nish Kumar
British stand-up comedian and presenter
In the last couple of years, Britain.
More from Noah Harari
View profile →I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.
When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.
When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.
Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.
I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.
On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.
More on failure & regret
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- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 125 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 125 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 79 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 40 answers
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Jason Isaacs, Ally McCoist, Ed Balls, Edith Bowman, Kathy Burke, Suzanne Vega
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