Armistead Maupin: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Armistead Maupin said elsewhere, not written here

Not a lawyer, which was what I told everyone, because my father wanted me to be one.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 August 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

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Anna Paquin New Zealand actress

I already had a career when I was growing up.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 July 2019 source ↗

Emilia Fox English actress and presenter

A cellist, inspired by my mum and dad’s friendship with Jacqueline du Pré, and seeing a documentary about her.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 October 2018 source ↗

Jack Whitehall English comedian, actor, presenter and writer

I was hellbent on being a Thunderbird. I was devastated when my parents finally told me it was a fictional organisation. Ruined my 18th.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 April 2023 source ↗

Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964

At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.

Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗