Where I Stand — Columnist Brian Greenspun: A message of hope

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 3:48 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 29 - 30, 2004

Editor's note: Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins gave the commencement speech Saturday at the Meadows School. Graduating senior Sydney Yuman asked her friend and Tony said yes. It was a first for one of the world's greatest actors. While his message was given to a graduating class of highly motivated students, it applies to every student and parent in this community. With his permission and a little editing for length, I am publishing his speech. It follows:

By Anthony Hopkins

I feel deeply honored to be here today at your school, and especially to be speaking at your graduation.

Sydney Yuman wrote me and asked if I would do this and I wrote back and said yes -- not having the foggiest notion of what a graduation was, or what a commencement speech involved. I come from another country far, far away from Las Vegas -- it's called South Wales -- that's way over the other side of the world -- and I don't think they have graduations there. Not like this anyway. I know I didn't have a graduation. I just decided one day to leave school before they kicked me out -- and that was that -- that was the end of my school days.

I could breathe a sigh of relief.

Last week I watched the president give a commencement speech on television. He said that he was a C student. I guess that's not a grade he was proud of but he said it didn't stop him from becoming president of the United States.

Well, I think I was a D student. Maybe I was a Z student. That's what I felt like. A big zero. As a kid I was told by one teacher that I would amount to nothing in life. I was graded on my report card as way below the educational standard of the school.

My parents were always in despair.

My father used to just shake his head rather sadly and say to my mother,"I don't know what'll become of him. He's hopeless. He can't do anything right."

And it was true. I couldn't seem to do anything without making a mess of it. One day, when I was about eight years old -- my mother took me to see a Dr. Bray -- he was called a child specialist -- to see if there was anything wrong with my brain. I mean my mother did it with the best intentions because I was her boy and she was naturally concerned about me.

She was convinced I had some form of brain damage. I'd fallen off my bike when I was five and landed on my head. I still have the scar.

Anyway, Dr. Bray examined me -- felt my head and looked into my eyes with a little flashlight. Then he gave me some test cards to look at -- I think they were IQ tests, designed to test powers of comprehension -- a series of geometrical puzzles and numbers and my task was to make them all fit together.

I couldn't get it. I couldn't comprehend anything. I remember Dr. Bray looking at my test results. He looked at them a long time. Then suddenly he smiled, got up from behind his desk and told my mother that there was nothing wrong with me.

My mother said, "But he can't seem to do anything right, he's hopeless in school and he doesn't play with other kids. He doesn't seem to be interested in anything. He's always on his own. We're very worried about him."

Dr. Bray looked at me, then he looked at my mother and said, "He's just bored. Leave him alone -- he's different. He'll find his way."

I shall always remember Dr. Bray.

Most people carry these negative and limiting voices of childhood around with them for the rest of their lives. I also did that -- for most of my life. I heard these ghostly voices telling me endlessly how hopeless and how worthless I was and how I would never amount to anything in life.

Just before I left school I realized I had no future at all. In those days, we took examinations called General Certificate of Education at ordinary level and at advanced level. I failed my first exam. I got one subject out of twelve. That was English. Then in my last year, 1955, I tried the exam once more and managed to get three subjects right -- English, English Literature and Geography. I failed at everything else -- Math, Latin and French, which confirmed the rightness of the voices in my head that I would amount to nothing. In other words I was destined to be a big zero in life.

I remember sitting in that exam room with the other students. It was a hot summer afternoon. I just sat and stared at this blank piece of examination paper -- it was a Math and Calculus paper. The questions were totally incomprehensible to me. The paper stayed blank -- except for a large ink blot that had mysteriously appeared right dead in the center of the page.

But I have no regrets. In fact it was all good. The feelings of inadequacy made me determined to do something that would be different.

I just wanted to be rich and famous.

That was it -- just rich and famous. I had no idea how I would accomplish this status in life.

Maybe I could become a famous gangster or something -- maybe a bank robber -- anything but a complete zero in life.

Then one evening in the spring of 1955, just by sheer coincidence or synchronicity, I wandered into the local YMCA on Station Road in Port Talbot.

At the far end of a long corridor, there was a large assembly hall, and I heard voices, not voices in my head, but real voices.

A rehearsal was in progress -- the YMCA Players.

I asked if I could join them and this man said yes. He was the director, Cyril Jenkins. They were rehearsing a play. I was given a line to speak --

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

That was my first performance -- March 26, 1955.

Later that year I won a scholarship to the Welsh College of Music and Drama. At last I'd wandered my way into a world that would change my life forever. I became an actor.

The years passed by and I became successful in my chosen profession. But those negative and limiting voices never left me alone. In fact they drove me on and on and guided me into many areas of life that I would prefer to forget. All the time however, I had a glimmering faith that one fine day I would be free of their destructive whispers.

It was, in fact, only recently that I felt a major shift take place in my life. I am at long last in a space where I feel relaxed and at peace with myself. I am free. I value my health, my friends, my lovely wife and family.

Hundreds of years ago, when I was a boy, I dreamed of coming to America. There was no way, given my school record and my potential for total failure in life, that I would ever make it to the shores of this great country. I had no plan, no goal, just a sunny dream that one of these fine days I would be here. I visualized it. I conjured up images of what it would be like to live in America, and I heard the songs on the radio --

"Chattanooga Choo Choo," Deep in the Heart of Texas," and the great singers of the day, Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, Dinah Shore, people you've probably never heard of, and I'd seen all the pictures in the glossy magazines and watched all the movies in my local movie theater, and all the beautiful movie stars in California's sunny dreamland and I knew that somehow, somewhere, someday ...

California to me was just a song on the radio -- "California here I come," but I knew in my heart of hearts' desire just where I wanted to be.

I've told you all this stuff about myself, because there may be something of value to you. Maybe not.

You are all graduating today into a larger world and the beginning of a new journey. You leave here today and, individually, will wander into another future which is unknowable -- there never has been and never will be certainty. Nothing is guaranteed. Yet there is great freedom and great excitement in uncertainty.

I look back over my own life and I had no idea that I would be where I am today, a newly made American citizen -- a C grade or Z grade student making a commencement speech at a school in the middle of the Nevada desert, in Las Vegas.

If somebody had told me that when I was your age, I would have said -- "Get outta here, give me a break, will ya?"

I have been asked a number of times by students who want to be actors what it takes to succeed. Is it talent? Is it appearance? What is that elusive ingredient that makes people live fulfilled lives; that gives them the certainty of goals and dreams?

I can never find an answer that's satisfactory. The only one I can come up with is desire and faith.

When I was starting out, just leaving school and plunging ahead into uncertainty, I heard one small voice inside me saying "all was well and all would be well." I had no religious belief and no hope of ever finding one. Then I made another discovery and I used it as my guiding principle and power. It was quite simple. That whatever God is, and no one knows what God is, but whatever it is, God in me as me is me -- so be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. Have faith and be not afraid.

I have been privileged to come to the United States and fortunate enough to find a life here. Daily we hear through the media how bad everything is and how there's nothing good anymore.

Most people speak with such immovable certainty and concrete authority about everything. Ask anyone for an opinion today, and most people have an absolute certainty in their mind about what is right and what is wrong. Rarely do people reply: "I don't know." We live in a "maybe or maybe not" world.

Life becomes easier simply by being open and flexible and by admitting that we don't have all the answers, if we have any answers at all, and that by giving up the need to know absolutely, by surrendering the insane need for certainty, we can live relatively free of stress and inappropriate fear.

There is no certainty. Of that, I am absolutely certain!

But remember -- whatever you can dream, you can do -- begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now!

I just want to close by wishing you all great health, good fortune and fair weather on the great seas and oceans of your lives and education, and I hope that if there is anything useful in my remarks today, you will fare well in the days to come.

So thank you, Sydney, and thank you all for having me here on this very important hallmark day of your lives.

Congratulations and happy graduation.

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