Becoming dickish.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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.
To be completely alone.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 June 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 266 →
Joan Rivers
Comedian
Being poor—or, worse, having Kelsey Grammer fight with Teddy Kennedy over who is to drive me home.
Robert Carlyle
Scottish actor
Losing my family in some way.
Safety of loved ones.
More from Toby Stephens
View profile →Ulysses – I’ve tried many times and never got through it.
I was in a restaurant with my daughter in Los Angeles and I had an accident involving a stomach upset. That was mortifying for both of us.
A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.
There was a very large part of my 20s where I was an alcoholic, and an addict. When I lost my dad to cirrhosis, I knew that the only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop whereas I could.
I cry all the time. It’s embarrassing. I mostly cry when my children perform something at school. My wife regularly says, “Do you see any other fathers weeping?” But I can’t stop myself.
Never ever think that things are going to turn out all right.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 252 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 204 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 161 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 114 answers
- What are you most proud of? 109 answers
Also answered this
Andy Serkis, Michael Flatley, John Malkovich, Mike Skinner, Olivia de Havilland, Bear Grylls
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