What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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.

Recorded Daphne Guinness said elsewhere, not written here
I wanted to be in the army or a spy in the intelligence service.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 July 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Ernst Mayr Naturalist and evolutionary biologist
My father had a wonderful library, and we always bought books galore, and I devoured all the books of explorers that went to various places in the world. I admired what Humboldt had done and Bates and Darwin and the Swedish explorers, Sven Hedin and others. I was dreaming all the time about someday being an explorer, going to the tropics, going to the jungles, seeing new things, discovering strange animals and so forth, but of course it was a dream world.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 5 April 2001 source ↗
Kate Mosse English writer
First I wanted to be in the circus, then a tap dancer, then prime minister. I have failed at all three.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 March 2022 source ↗

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