The question
What do you fear most?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.
Every actor has the same fear – ie, you’re never going to work again.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 August 2026 source ↗
Losing consciousness or awareness.
Living with severe chronic pain, or forgetting the name of the person I’m interviewing.
Not trying something I really want to do.
Falling onstage…or anywhere.
I was about six years old in a market square in Italy and my dad said, “Oh, those shorts would look perfect on you.” So he whipped my trousers off and I hadn’t got any knickers on.
Nothing at all.
Mucking out pigs on a farm when I was 15.
The king – because he’s been through quite a bit and I think he’s come out the other side brilliantly.
My first wife, because I left her.
When they don’t tell the truth.
Scottie Pippen, Meghann Fahy, Dervla Kirwan, Philippa Gregory, Judy Blume, Daphne Guinness
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