I wanted to get into music, I was answering ads in the paper, crazy stuff, really. I met people in a band, [and] ended up going to Antwerp, Belgium.
Matthew Velasco, Heroes, V Magazine, 23 May 2023 source ↗
The question
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.
I wanted to get into music, I was answering ads in the paper, crazy stuff, really. I met people in a band, [and] ended up going to Antwerp, Belgium.
Matthew Velasco, Heroes, V Magazine, 23 May 2023 source ↗
A great composer. I wrote to Benjamin Britten to tell him this and that he was my third favourite composer. For some reason he didn’t feel moved to reply.
An artist, an interior designer and a vet.
I didn’t have a chance to want to be anything – I became an actor at 11.
My mother says I had a plan to be a farmer’s wife and a violinist, going to concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in my tractor.
This one!
Probably something else I learned at art school, which is the ability to make something from very little using your own imagination. That’s the building block of my career.
Making my passion into a career.
Remembering something I wish I hadn't said.
This time I wanted to live a bit more, which is why I wanted to do it in London. I didn’t want to entirely give up my social life, my personal life. I didn’t want it to become a 24/7 thing for me. I got to go home at night to my own home and maybe go out to drink with a mate or spend time with my dog and my partner.
There is no getting around the work requirement. Also, the creative side is only part of the work. I work really hard.
Emeli Sandé, Ronnie Wood, Viv Albertine, Kim Wilde, Alessia Cara, Jennifer Hudson
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