Mandy Patinkin
American actor and singer
Less work, more living.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Stopping being such a helicopter parent and worrying about these grownup children’s lives. It drives me mad. And I am having therapy. If I could stop thinking that I should be their first port of call for everything, it would free my head up a bit.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 December 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Shaznay Lewis
English singer
Not scrolling on my phone as much as I do.
A dog, though my husband would prefer a cat.
John Prescott
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007
To learn to relax and enjoy it.
More from Denise Welch
View profile →I was a waitress at a holiday camp. On a Wednesday afternoon all the guys used to pee into the rice pudding and we had to serve it to the customers.
My husband, Lincoln, for getting sober with me. He turned his own life around to turn mine around. We didn’t do AA, we anchored each other.
Funny, annoying and kind.
Now, because of my marriage and because since September 2019 I’ve been free of clinical depression.
Shitting myself in New York last November. I was wearing cream trousers. We were going to see my son Matty and his band, the 1975, at Madison Square Garden, and I was walking through the streets, enjoying the sunshine, pretending I was in some kind of video – throwing my hat into the New York sky like Mary Tyler Moore. I saw a couple of people turn and look at me. Now, although I’m not famous in New York, whenever Matty’s there I do get recognised as his mum, so I’m smiling and waving at them. I went back to the hotel room and bent over to get something out of the suitcase, and my husband said: “Do you realise you’ve shat yourself?”
The people I hurt when I was suffering with addiction to alcohol and cocaine.
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