The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Composer, pirate, scientist, philosopher.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 July 2026 source ↗
Before I knew what being an actor was, I wanted to be one.
First loved, then laid, then paid.
At the end he asked me if I would like to go into the Army. I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said 'Yes' at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. ... I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar. However that may be, the toy soldiers turned the current of my life.
Many things. I remember wanting to be a vet, a ballet dancer and a hairdresser.
Not being there for my daughter.
Evolve or perish.
Alchemy. Love. Resilience.
Looking after the flowerbed on my windowsill.
A Dalí painting.
On a train journey to Arcadia many years ago while making a TV documentary.
Anne Enright, Dervla Kirwan, John Lewis, Mariella Frostrup, Vick Hope, Joanne Froggatt
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