Finding out I was pregnant when I’d been told it would be difficult to have children.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 August 2019 source ↗
The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 577 →
Madhur Jaffrey
Actress, cook, and TV host
I am happiest when I am working.
John Waters
American filmmaker
Chasing after fire engines as a child with my dad and watching neighbours' houses burn to the ground.
Mary Portas
English retail consultant
Now. Without a doubt
Josette Simon
British actor
I don’t have a happiest; I live in the now.
More from Anna Friel
View profile →Weird Fishes by Radiohead.
A barrister or a pop star.
Warm, comforting, hopeful, inspiring and daft.
Getting down to the last two of certain jobs (Gangs Of New York and Fight Club) and being thwarted at the last second.
I nearly died by burst ovarian cyst in 2001. I was doing the front cover of a magazine and someone said, “Can you not pull your tummy in?” It turned out that I had been carrying two litres of blood in my stomach. I was rushed to hospital the next morning and nearly died of septicaemia. They had to give me two blood transfusions. Had it been an hour later it would have been bye bye.
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Stephen Dillane, Simon Russell Beale, Richard Wilson, Tim Robbins, Sue Perkins, Cuba Gooding Jr
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