LEARN ENGLISH Meryl Streep You dont have to be famous with BIG subtitles

thank you all Thank You president spar

ms golden president Tillman members of

the Board of Trustees distinguished

faculty proud swelling parents and

family and gorgeous class of 2010 if you

are all really really lucky and if you

continue to work super hard and you

remember your thank you notes and

everybody’s name and you follow through

on every task that’s asked of you and

also somehow anticipate problems before

they even arise and you somehow sidestep

disaster and score big if you get great

scores on your L SATs or M sets or

ersatz or whatever and you get into your

dream grad school or internship which

then leads to a super job with a

paycheck commensurate with the

responsibilities of leadership or if you

somehow get that documentary edited on a

shoestring budget budget and then it’s

accepted at Sundance and then maybe it

wins Sundance and then you go on to be

nominated for an Oscar and then you win

the Oscar or if that money making

website that you’ve designed with your

friends somehow suddenly attracts

investors and advertisers and becomes

the go-to site for whatever it is you’re

selling blogging sharing or net casting

and success shining hoped for but never

really anticipated success comes your

way I guarantee you someone you know or

love will come to you and say will you

address the graduates at my

[Applause]

yeah

and you’ll say yeah sure when is it May

2010 2010 yeah that’s sure that’s months

away and then the nightmare begins

the nightmare we’ve all had and I want

to assure you you will continue to have

even after graduation forty years after

graduation about a week before the due

date you wake up in the middle of night

oh I have a paper due and I haven’t done

the reading oh my god

if you have been touched by the success

fairy people think you know why people

[Laughter]

think success breeds enlightenment and

you are duty-bound to spread it around

like manure fertilize those young minds

let them in on the secret what is it

that you know that no one else knows the

self-examination begins one looks inward

one opens an interior door cobwebs black

the lights bulb bulbs burned out the

airless dank refrigerator of an insanely

over scheduled unexamined life that

usually just gets takeout where is my

writer friend Anna Quindlen when I need

on another book tour

[Laughter]

hello I’m Meryl Streep

oh and today class of 2010 I am really I

am very honored and I am humbled to be

asked to pass on tips and inspiration to

you for achieving success in this next

part of your lives president’s far when

I when I consider the other

distinguished medal recipients and the

venerable Board of Trustees the many

accomplished faculty and family members

people who’ve actually done things

produced things while I have pretended

to do things I can think of about 3,800

people who should have been on this list

before me and you know since my my

success has depended wholly on my

putting things over on people so I’m not

sure the parents really think I’m that

great a role model anyway I am however

an expert in pretending to be an expert

in various areas so just randomly like

everything else in this speech I am or I

was an expert in kissing on stage and on

screen how did I prepare for this

well most of my preparation for this was

took place at my suburban high school

rather behind my suburban high school in

New Jersey one is obliged to do a great

deal of kissing in my line of work air

kissing ass kissing kissing up and of

course actual kissing much like hookers

actors have to do it with people we may

not like or even know we may have to do

it with friends which is believe it or

not particularly awkward for people of

my generation it’s awkward my other

areas of fo expertise river rafting

miming the effects of radiation

poisoning knowing which shoes go with

which bag coffee plantation in Polish

German French Italian that’s Iowa

tallien from the Bridges of Madison

County bit of a brogue bit of the Bronx

Aramaic kiddush Irish clog dancing

cooking singing riding horses knitting

playing the violin and simulating steamy

sexual encounters these are some of the

areas in which I have pretended quite

proficiently to be successful or the

other way around as have many women here

I’m sure

[Music]

women I feel I can say this

authoritative Lee especially at Barnard

where they can’t hear us what am I

talking about they professionally can’t

hear us women are better at acting than

men why because we have to be if

successfully convincing someone bigger

than you are of something he doesn’t

want to know is a survival skill this is

how women have survived through the

millennia pretending is not just play

pretending is imagined possibility

pretending or acting is a very valuable

life skill and we all do it all the time

we don’t want to be caught doing it but

nevertheless it’s part of the adaptation

of our species we we change who we are

to fit the exigencies of our time and

not just strategically or to our own

advantage

sometimes sympathetically without our

even knowing it for the betterment of

the whole group I remember very clearly

my own first conscious attempt at acting

I was six

placing my mother’s half slip over my

head in preparation to play the Virgin

Mary in our living room

as I swaddled my Betsy wetsy doll

I felt quieted holy actually and my

transfigured face and very changed

demeanor captured on super 8 by my dad

pulled my little brother’s hairy for

playing Joseph and Dana to a barnyard

animal into the trance they they they

were actually pulled into this little

nativity scene by the the intensity of

my focus in a way that my usual

technique for getting them to do what I

want yelling at them never ever would

have achieved and I learned something on

that day later when I was 9 I remember

taking my mother’s eyebrow pencil and

carefully drawing lines all over my face

replicating the wrinkles that I had

memorized on the face of my grandmother

whom I adored I made my mother take my

picture and I look at it now of course I

look like myself now and my grandmother

then but I really do remember in my

bones how how it was possible on that

day to feel her age i stooped I felt

weighted down but cheerful you know I

felt like her empathy is at the heart of

the actor’s art and in high school

another form of acting took hold of me I

wanted to learn how to be appealing so I

studied the character I imagined I

wanted to be that of the generically

pretty high school girl I researched her

deeply

that is to say shallowly in vogue and 17

and Mademoiselle magazines I tried to

imitate her hair

her lipstick her lashes the clothes of

the lie some beautiful generically

appealing highschool girls that I saw in

those pages I ate an apple a day period

i proc cited my hair I earned it

straight I demanded brand-name clothes

my mother shut me down on that one but I

did I worked harder on this

characterization really than any anyone

that I think I’ve ever done since I

worked on my giggle I I lightened it

because I liked it when it kind of went

up at the end because I thought it

sounded childlike and and cute this was

all about appealing to boys and at the

same time being accepted by the girls is

very tricky negotiation often success in

one area precludes succeeding in the

other and along with all of my exterior

choices I worked on what my what actors

call my interior adjustment I adjusted

my natural temperament which attended

ten tends to be slightly bossy little

opinionated loud little loud full of

pronouncements and high spirits and i

willfully cultivated softness

agreeableness breezy natural sort of

sweetness even a shyness if you will

which was very very very very very

effective on the boys but the girls

didn’t buy it they didn’t like me

they sniffed it out the acting and they

were probably right but I was I was

committed this was absolutely not a

cynical exercise this was a vestige of

survival courtship skill I was

developing and I reached a point senior

year when my adjustment felt like me I

had actually convinced myself that I was

this person and she me pretty talented

but not stuck-up you know a girl who

laughed a lot at every stupid thing

every boy said and who lowered her eyes

at the right moment and deferred who

learned to defer when the boys took over

the conversation I really remember this

so clearly and I could tell it was

working I was much less annoying to the

guys than I had been they liked me

better and I liked that this was

conscious but it was at the same time

motivated and fully fully felt this was

real real acting I got to Vassar which

forty-three years ago was a single sex

institution like all the colleges and

what they called the Seven Sisters the

female Ivy League and I made some very

quick but lifelong and challenging

friends and with their help outside of

any competition for boys my brain woke

up

I got up and I got outside myself and I

I found myself again I didn’t have to

pretend I could be goofy vehement

aggressive and slovenly and open and

funny and tough and my friends let me I

didn’t wash my hair for three weeks once

they accepted me like The Velveteen

Rabbit I became real instead of an

imaginary stuffed bunny but I stuck

piled that character from high school

and I breathed life into her again some

years later as Linda in The Deer Hunter

that was probably not one of you

graduates who has ever seen this film

but The Deer Hunter it it won Best

Picture in 1978 Robert De Niro Chris

Walken not funny at all and I played

Linda a small-town girl from a

working-class background a lovely quiet

hapless girl who waited for the boys she

loved to come back from the war in

Vietnam often men my age

President Clinton by the way when I met

him said men my age mentioned that

character as their favorite of all the

women I’ve played

and I have my own secret understanding

of why that is and it confirms every

decision I made in high school this is

not to denigrate that girl by the way or

the men who are drawn to her in any way

because she’s still part of me and I’m

part of her she wasn’t acting but she

was just behaving in a way that cowed

girls submissive girls beaten up girls

with very few ways out have behaved

forever and still do in many worlds now

in a measure of how much the world has

changed the character most men mention

as their favorite is Miranda Priestly

the beleaguered totalitarian US at the

head of runway magazine Devil Wears

Prada to my mind this represents such an

optimistic shift they relate to Miranda

they wanted to date Linda they felt

sorry for Linda but they feel like

Miranda they can relate to her issues

the high standards she sets for herself

and others

the thankless nough subtly der ship

position that nobody understands me

thing the loneliness they stand outside

one character and they pity her and they

kind of fall in love with her but they

look through the eyes of this other

character this is a huge deal because as

people in the movie business know the

absolute hardest thing in the whole

world is to persuade a straight male

audience to identify with a woman

protagonist to feel themselves embodied

by her this more than any other factor

explains why we get the movies we get

and the paucity of roles where women

drive the film

it’s much

it’s much easier for the female audience

because we were all brought up grown up

identifying with male characters from

Shakespeare to Salinger we have less

trouble following Hamlet’s dilemma

viscerally or Romeo’s or Tibbles or Huck

Finn or Peter Pan I remember holding

that sword up to hook I felt like him

but it is much much much harder for

heterosexual boys to be able to identify

with Juliet or Desdemona or Wendy in

Peter Pan or Joe in Little Women or the

little mermaid or Pocahontas why I don’t

know but it just is there has always

been a resistance to imaginatively

assume a persona if that persona is a

sheen the things are changing now and

it’s in your generation that we’re

seeing this men are adapting about time

they are adapting consciously and also

without realizing it for the better of

the whole group they’re changing their

deepest prejudices to accept and to

regard as normal things that their

fathers their fathers would have found

very very difficult and their

grandfathers would have aboard and the

door into this emotional shift is

empathy as young said emotion is the

chief source of becoming conscious there

can be no transforming of lightness into

dark of apathy into movement without

emotion or as Leonard Cohen says pay

attention to the cracks because that’s

where the light gets in you young women

of Barnard have not had to squeeze

yourselves into the corset of being cute

or to muffle your opinions but then you

haven’t left campus yet I just came just

kidding

you have had you what you have had is

the privilege of a very specific

education you are people that may be

able to draw on a completely different

perspective to imagine to imagine a

different possibility than women and men

who went to co-ed schools how this

difference is going to really serve you

it’s it’s hard to quantify now you may

may take you 40 years like it did me to

look back and analyze your advantage but

today is about looking forward into a

world where so-called women’s issues

human issues of gender inequality live

at the very crux of the global problems

everyone suffers from poverty to the age

crisis the rise in violent

fundamentalist hunters human trafficking

and human rights abuses and you’re going

to have the

opportunity and the obligation by virtue

of your provenance to speed progress in

all these areas and this is a place

where even though the need is very great

the news is - this is your time and it

feels normal to you but really there is

no normal

there’s only change and resistance to it

and then more change never before in the

history of our country have most of the

advanced degrees been awarded to women

but now they are since the dawn of man

it’s hardly more than a hundred years

since we were even allowed into these

buildings except to clean them but soon

most of the law and medical degrees will

probably also go to women around the

world poor women now own property who

used to be property and according to the

Economist magazine for the last two

decades the increase in female

employment in the rich world has been

the main driving force of growth those

women have contributed more to global

GDP growth than have either new

technology or the new giants India or

China cracks in the ceiling cracks in

the door cracks in the court and on the

Senate floor

you know I gave a speech at Vassar 27

years ago it was a really big hit

everybody loved it really Tom Brokaw

said it was the very best commencement

speech he had ever heard and of course I

believed this and you know it was much

much easier to construct than this one

it it came out pretty easily because

back then I knew so much I was a new

mother I had a and I had an account I

had to I had two Academy Awards and it

was all you know coming together so

nicely I was smart and I understood

boilerplate and what sounded good and

because I’d been on the squad in high

school earnest full throated

cheerleading was my specialty so that’s

what I did but now I feel like I know

about one sixteenth of what that young

woman knew things don’t seem as certain

today

now I’m sixty I have four adult children

who are all facing the same challenges

that you are how it makes things tough

for your family and whether being famous

matters really one bit in the end and

the whole flux of time I know I was

invited here because of how famous I am

and how many awards I’ve won and and

while I am I am overweening ly proud of

the work that I believe me did not do on

my own I can assure you that awards have

very little bearing on my own personal

happiness my own sense of well-being and

purpose in the world

that comes from studying the world

feelingly with empathy in my work it it

comes from staying alert and alive and

involved in the lives of the people that

I love and the people in the wider world

who need my help no matter what you see

me or hear me saying when I’m on your TV

holding a statuette and spewing that’s

acting being a celebrity has taught me

to hide but being an actor has opened my

soul

being here today has forced me to look

around inside there for something useful

that I can share with you and I’m I’m

really grateful that you gave me the

chance you know you don’t have to be

famous you just have to make your mother

and father proud of you and you already

have Bravo to your congratulations

[Applause]

you