Rick Astley
Singer, songwriter and radio presenter
When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Question
What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong?
Values & belief
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the thing you are best at that nobody watching can see?
Craft & work
Question
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Daily life
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
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 dreamt of being an astronomer, I had a series of How and Why Books on the planets and the stars.
Patricia Edmonds, National Geographic, 3 February 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 204 →I wanted to be a doctor, like my father.
Griff Rhys Jones
British actor and comedian
An actor. Then I grew out of that and became one by default. Or sort of one: “Not really an actor”, said Michael Billington.
Katherine Parkinson
English actor
An astronaut. I still do.
More from Geoffrey Rush
View profile →we are bashed by the media who say we should compete with Hollywood.
But, tough, I have fallen…flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.
But if I’ve come up with any kind of mantra for myself it’s to try and put myself into a state of imaginative play.
There’s been a lot of stuff that I turned down.
A painting of the late actor Bille Brown by Australian artist Ben Quilty, to commemorate decades of fraternal and professional bonds.
Yielding to the wrong sort of melancholia.
More on identity & self
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Billy Porter, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jenna Coleman, Felicity Jones, Harriet Walter, Brendan Gleeson
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