The question
What do you fear most?Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Getting to the end and thinking that I haven’t laughed enough.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 January 2026 source ↗
I’ve always been frightened of the dark. I sometimes wonder whether it stems from being away filming from the age of five. I can remember being devastatingly homesick and having a little nightlight I used to look at to reassure myself things were all right.
Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things.
Getting thrown down a well.
That we will have waited too long to save the earth from environmental catastrophe.
Good memories. When I’m gone, I want them to feel that they were always my No 1 priority.
That you get out of life what you put in. When you grow up on a farm you literally reap what you sow.
To Gorka Márquez, who was my Strictly partner, for not winning the glitterball in 2022.
More sleep – my children do not sleep.
Jealousy. It’s the thief of joy.
As someone who made you think that anything’s possible. I did three marathons in a day once but walking the high-wire at Battersea Park station was the challenge I loved most because I had to master a skill.
Monica Dolan, Bruce Dickinson, Renée Zellweger, Scottie Pippen, Ciarán Hinds, Cory Taylor
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