Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Irish actor
Two days as a labourer in my 15th summer.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’ve never really had a horrible job – I liked working at restaurants and being a nanny when I wasn’t acting.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 April 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 231 →
Joseph Fiennes
English actor
Several: cutting the local vicar's lawn, shovelling shit from a stable, waiting tables, picking up and washing actors' smelly pants and socks.
Mike Skinner
English rapper
Cleaning toilets in a motorway service station.
Neil Gaiman
Author of fiction, comics and screenplays
The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.
More from Meghann Fahy
View profile →My tendency to be avoidant.
An inability to be authentic.
In my 20s I was in a show called The Unauthorised Autobiography of Samantha Brown. The actor who played my dad messed up his lines and it made me laugh so hard that I ended up peeing my pants.
I had a casting director once stop me in the middle of an audition and tell me to go wash my face in the bathroom because she felt my makeup was too distracting, but I wasn’t wearing any. It was mortifying. It felt like a power play and I was so young, I didn’t know what to do.
Someone to clean my apartment.
All of the anxious thoughts that you are able to escape during the day that somehow know when you are lying down to relax.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 192 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 69 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 68 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 67 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 50 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 45 answers
Also answered this
Frank Bowling, Michelle Collins, Justin Hawkins, Julian Lennon, Chaka Khan, Guz Khan
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject