It used to be loneliness, and it might still be.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
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.
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, August 2013 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Bryn Terfel
Welsh bass-baritone singer
I’ve been a strong advocate that all my five children should be great swimmers, so you can deduce what my fear is.
Couples who have to be sat side by side at L.A. dinner parties. What is that all about?!
Craig Charles
English actor
Losing my marbles.
More from John Malkovich
View profile →How long do we have?
If one could shut off the modern world and all the information that flows, not necessarily into your brain but at your face, and doesn’t benefit anything or make one better informed.
The susceptibility to ideology or tribalism.
By my friends as hopefully someone who was a good friend, or at least amusing, but I don’t need to be remembered by people I don’t know.
I admire the mother of my children a great deal, because she’s interesting, smart and funny.
A baseball pitcher.
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
Daryl McCormack, Charles Dance, James Norton, Robert Glenister, Jerry Lewis, David Hasselhoff
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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