Ciarán Hinds: What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

The question

What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

As a young actor, again at the Citizens theatre, I was making an exit and a theatregoer leaned over the balcony and said, “You’re terrible!”

The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 July 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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Ally McCoist

“You’re getting old.” My son Harris was factually correct, but I didn’t need to hear it.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 November 2024 source ↗

Olly Alexander English singer and actor

It’s the stuff about my appearance that sticks. I read I had a face like a crumpled napkin and teeth that could till a field.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 March 2025 source ↗

Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

There will always be so many who might say, “Ah, he’s a politician masquerading as an archbishop.” Politics is so all-pervasive, and in my theology, obviously, all of life belongs to God, and you don’t have compartments, this is your economic life, this is your political life, this is your religious life. Religion encompasses all of those. But yes, I wouldn’t myself have said I was setting out to be a political animal.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Stockard Channing