At age 97 and counting, guess.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
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.
Losing my mind.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 266 →
Stephen Fry
Actor, writer and broadcaster
Being found out.
Alison Steadman
British actress
That we will drown in plastic waste.
Having gone through the depression of ’29, I’d hate to see the U.S. hit bottom and not come back!
More from Ben Stiller
View profile →Filippo Grandi, United Nations Refugee Agency high commissioner.
Self-importance.
Being in process on a creative project I love.
Probably as a small child in a pool in my mother’s arms.
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
David Hasselhoff, Jerry Lewis, Serena Williams, Sally Field, Tom Lubbock, Scott Mills
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- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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