Peter Capaldi
Actor and director
Death is always close.
How close have you come to death?
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Getting into a tense argument with Russell Crowe during one of the Vanity Fair Oscar parties.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 June 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 210 →
Charles Dance
British actor
I’m getting closer all the time.
Bruce Dickinson
English heavy metal singer
I’ve been asleep at the wheel on the M11, had an engine fire over the Atlantic in a light aircraft, driven unprotected through an enemy firing zone to do a gig in wartime Sarajevo – the list goes on and on. But I did have stage 3 throat cancer and was cured by some fantastic UK medics.
Julia Ormond
English actress
A trip to a Macedonian refugee camp that I switched out of, to go at a later date. Those who took my place were killed in a horrific car accident.
More from Graydon Carter
View profile →Be generous and kind. Honestly, those two things did everything for me.
“Didn’t you used to be Graydon Carter?”
That time I congratulated a waitress on being pregnant.
My first week in New York in 1978, when I was about to start as a writer at Time. And my first week in the south of France after retiring from my job of 25 years as editor of Vanity Fair.
The metabolism I had in my 20s.
Intermittent laziness.
More on death & what remains
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- What song would you like played at your funeral? 179 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What happens when we die? 53 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 46 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
John Malkovich, Jonnie Peacock, Russell Mael, Edwina Currie, Winston Churchill, Kim Gordon
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