Richard Schiff: What is your greatest fear?

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.

Recorded Richard Schiff said elsewhere, not written here

People finding out my greatest fear.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 April 2026 source ↗

Others on this question

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Andrew O’Hagan

I can’t say it.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 July 2026 source ↗

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995

I don’t think it’s misused yet, people are afraid of it might be misused but on the other hand, there is also value in finding out about the relation between several particular predispositions. You might be more careful if you are told that your genetic background is such that you shouldn’t eat fat in large amounts or so, it does help you change your life a little bit and so it’s not so bad, but it’s hard to find out which genetic background is causing these things.

Recorded Marika Griehsel, Interview at the 53rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 30 June–4 July 2003, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 July 2003 source ↗

Charles Dance British actor