Ed Harris
American actor and director
Near head-on collision driving from Oklahoma to California back in the 70s.
How close have you come to death?
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Being driven across the Atlas Mountains in a snowstorm 25 years ago, by a local taxi driver who plainly put a lower premium on the advantages of living than me.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 June 2018 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 209 →
Emilia Fox
English actress and presenter
I’ve been to two postmortems in real life, and spent the last 14 years talking about death at work – so, pretty close.
Julian Sands
British actor
In the early 90s, in the Andes, caught in an atrocious storm above 20,000ft with three others. We were all in a very bad way. Some guys close to us perished; we were lucky.
Getting into a tense argument with Russell Crowe during one of the Vanity Fair Oscar parties.
More from Robert Peston
View profile →I am rarely disappointed. I try to make the best of things.
Prime minister and brain surgeon.
With my late wife, Siân Busby, and our boys, Max and Simon, on assorted Welsh and English beaches, in sunshine and rain – especially when there was a Punch and Judy show on the prom.
As a dad who was OK.
Cleaning the freezer room at Bejam as a Saturday job, aged 13.
A Savile Row suit. Never again. Although I love it, I still feel guilty about what it cost.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 215 answers
- What song would you like played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What happens when we die? 51 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 45 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Zack Polanski, Sadiq Khan, Keir Starmer, Desmond Tutu, Gloria Steinem, Jon Snow
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All death & what remains questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject