This past Friday, May 9th, Angela Lansbury was the commencement speaker for the graduation exercises of the University of Miami's College of Arts and Sciences. As part of the ceremony she was also given the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. You can see her receiving her honorary degree and deliver her commencement address at the University of Miami's commencement website - in the May 2008 Commencement Webcast Archives section click on the fourth one down labled "Friday, May 9th, 5 p.m." You'll need RealPlayer installed on your computer in order for the webcast to load and play. Angela's honorary degree and speech start around minute 34 if you want to skip ahead. Be sure to listen to university President Donna E. Shalala's introduction - aside form it being a well-composed recap of her biography, it has a couple of humorous moments in it as well.
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| [Angela receives her honorary degree from President Donna Shalala] |
"Good evening to you all! As someone who never complete high school, you can imagine how enormously proud I am to receive this honor. I fear that I was a dreamer, my eyes always on the sky and the world outside the classroom window. My mind was always lost in the world of my imagination, so much more fulfilling and entertaining. Well, here I am today, graduating with all of you, and it feels great!
"You know, I was so honored to receive the invitation from President Shalala to come here, and I did not quite realize what I was getting myself into. When I had the opportunity to think about it, it dawned on me that I was going to have to address you all, and I was quickly humbled as tried to figure out what to say to you, what would mean something and what might be of help to you. In today’s world it is no small challenge to try and think of what to say to young students as they sit here facing life after college. Dear God, what’s next? It might be the equivalent of being pushed out of an airplane at 30,000 feet without a parachute, all the time hoping that you will land alive and well in a dream job and a career of a lifetime. Believe me, I remember the feeling.
"Numerous times I am asked by students how I achieved my success as an actress. Of course, every generation has its own standards of accomplishment, of setting goals, so comparisons are not always the best idea. My young life, after all, was lived during tumultuous world events – the Great Depression of the 1930's, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Holocaust – so my generation was literally propelled into learning how to survive and succeed at keeping body and soul together during the huge and often devastating events that took place at that time, events which I imagine are very hard for some of you to conceive in today’s world, but unfortunately we have our own set of tumultuous events going on as we all know. But each person has his unique set of circumstances, and all of us have God-given talents: for you and for me, happily it is in the arts. I was blessed, thank God, with a gift to act from on the onset, and fortunately that talent was coupled with a fact that I simply believed that I could do it, and with my mother’s help I began the process of learning everything I could about the theater arts – voice, dancing, ballet dancing tap dancing, classical theater techniques, singing, voice production, and first in London and then later on in New York, when I was aided by the great American Theater Wing who helped me to get a scholarship at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art. One of the first real thrills for me was the very first moment for dressing up in the costumes, the wigs, the make-up as I got to transform myself into the character that I was going to be playing. To this day when I am cast in a role, you know the first thing I think about it is, what would this woman look like? What kind of clothes would she buy for herself? What could she afford to buy? Because it is vital for an actor to feel comfortable and 'in character' when he or she steps out on to that stage as someone other than themselves. Because we leave ourselves at home – at least I always attempt to do that. It’s a good thing to remember: leave yourself at home when you go on an interview or you’re going to try out for a role, don’t bring your fears with you, leave them at home. I mention this because it is all part of the artistic process, the learning, the knowledge one must have, as it were. Because we are artists, whether an actor like me, or a writer, a painter, designer, sculptor, poet, musician. No matter which field, it is so important that we learn and keep learning everything possible about what it is that we want to do. Auntie Mame loftily proclaims, 'Knowledge is power.' Well, we talk a lot about keeping an open mind, but an open mind to what? I mean, what is there out there that floats our boat? How can we be certain about anything unless we open our minds to absolutely everything that is out there, not just through the internet but by soaking up books, movies, theater, music, literature, art, other people, simply everything. We never know where our inspiration will come from. Don’t think for a minute that you can sit back and say to yourselves, 'I’m ready.' Your learning process is just beginning in the real world of achievement. Be curious. Ask questions. Don’t settle for the given. Have an opinion, create goals, dream, imagine, visualize, and then prepare to accept, to receive, and to achieve. Be ready.
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| [Angela delivering her commencement address to the Class of '08] |
"The great writer and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing said, 'Ask any modern storyteller and they will say that there is always a moment when they are touched with fire and what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, fire and ice and the great winds that shape us and our world. The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The storyteller is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we, all of us, easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities – it happens too often, I’m afraid - the seas rise but the story teller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us and create us for good and for ill. It is our stories, the storyteller, that will recreate us when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream maker, the myth maker, that is our feelings, what we are at our best, when we are most creative.' She speaks to the artist that we all are or aspire to be. She is speaking to you and me.
"Well, no one in a commencement speech can even begin to cover all the important things that you will need to know in life, and on this special day even if I told you every single thing that you ever needed to know, which I couldn’t because I’m not smart enough really to be able to do that, or that you might want to know, it would be impossible to absorb them in the excitement of today. However, before I finish there are a couple of things I want to emphasize: be all that you can be. Seek all the knowledge that you can. And do all the things that you can in the best way possible for you and for humanity. So that’s what I want to talk to you about, being more, always more. To be more, to seek out and understand the things that you would love to do more than anything in life, then go for it. Be aware of risk and be prepared for hard work and maintain belief in yourself. There will be times when fear will drive you off course, but it has been said that fear is false evidence appearing real, and the antidote is face everything and recover. In this case “recover” is recovering or discovering - in this case, as I said, the person you were meant to be. It is a life-long journey full of good and bad and everything in between but when it is done it will be the right journey and it will always be full. To be more you need to know more, more about yourself, more about others, more about the world. Be curious, seek knowledge, never stop learning and never stop listening, and have that open mind. Of course the last thing is the doing. Nothing can be accomplished without making the move, taking the action, and always do that so that it honors you, the planet, and everyone else on it.
"So as you stand here on this airplane dreading at the very least about the drop that happens next, have faith, take the leap. You will be surprised at the wings that you will grow and how many nets and outstretched hands will appear to speed you and help you along the way. And if you want to know where to go, just look around: the world is full of incredible opportunities that will enable you to do the good thing and enable you to be more, always more. And you will become more, and you will lift those around you as well. We look around and we see disease and war, poverty, hunger, and be tempted to despair and ask, is there really goodness or a spirit or a higher power in the universe, or whatever you might choose to call it? You may ask how all this can be allowed to happen – what is the purpose, where is the goodness in such things? Well, I will tell you that the purpose and the goodness in these things is what you as an individual do about them. There is the purpose and the goodness. So from the bottom of my heart I want to applaud every single one of you who is graduating today. You are leaving the University of Miami with the reputation as the best and the brightest class to graduate from this institution. Bravo, brava! The memories you’ve created you leave to each other and those who have spent time with you. It is an accomplishment of which you can be very proud and one for which your families and your friends can be proud as well. I salute you all. And remember, the only important expectations are your own. Yes, you will have to face the hopes and expectations of others – your families, your friends – but don’t let others limit your dreams or ambitions, and don’t worry if your dreams are not yet fully formed. I suspect for many of you they haven’t begun to surface and they won’t until you have the opportunity to taste the plethora of possibilities that are out there if you will only open your minds and your hearts to them. Everything is possible – this is just the beginning.
