Eddie Marsan: 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 Eddie Marsan said elsewhere, not written here

I wouldn't have been a bully and I'd have stood up to more bullies.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 August 2014 source ↗

Others on this question

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Gino D'Acampo Italian-British celebrity chef and media personality

I would have spent more time with my parents. I did see them often, but you don’t realise how much you’ll miss someone or something until it’s gone.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2022 source ↗

Clare Bailey Mosley

I wouldn’t because everything is connected with everything else.

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

Minnie Driver British and American actress

I’d edit out all the awful men I managed to find who confirmed my worst suspicions about my body and my character.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 February 2023 source ↗

Cory Taylor Novelist and screenwriter

So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

Recorded Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016 source ↗