Rita Moreno
Actor, singer and dancer
Short-term memory.
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Believing in, even admiring, people who refuse to believe in me, and not believing people who do.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 243 →Insecurity around money. I have this profound insecurity about not having enough to provide for my family.
Procrastination.
Impatience and vanity.
More from Lemn Sissay
View profile →Life is not worth living if there is no one you would die for.
That I can’t write.
Also my most triumphant: 2017 at the Royal Court. Julie Hesmondhalgh reads my psychologist’s report over two hours. Every excruciating intimate word of it. Extreme verbatim theatre. One night only.
I made a suicide attempt at 12 or 13 years old.
When I was a child, a member of staff at Wood End Assessment Centre [a former children’s home in Wigan] bellowed: “He copies them poems off of Bob Marley records.”
In a photo album of just one family.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Jack Dee, Willem Dafoe, Martin Scorsese, Joseph Fiennes, Marina Abramović, Julie Andrews
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- All identity & self questions
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