John Malkovich
American actor
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
What is your greatest fear?
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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.
Perfectionism that leads to procrastination.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →I’m a very fearless person.
To be so cold that I am not able to sleep.
Melissa Etheridge
Singer, songwriter and guitarist
To let fear overcome my life. We’re not gonna let that happen because love is always greater than fear.
More from Rosalind Eleazar
View profile →Analytical, extreme and playful.
Watching the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin [about a gamer who died at 25 of a degenerative muscular disease]. I bawled.
My closest friend at uni – I sometimes retreat from life in quite an extreme way, without word. Back then, I didn’t really understand what I was doing.
Oversharing my personal life, but here we are, oversharing!
Working on myself. I’m a work in progress to the end.
That fear and excitement sometimes feel quite similar and you can misinterpret one for the other.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Fran Lebowitz, Sharon Corr, Jean Smart, Tom Burke, Keir Starmer, Stephen Fry
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject