“好莱坞文凭收割机”詹姆斯·弗兰科：做你热爱的事，不要惧怕成为“新手”

每年毕业季，美国的大学都会邀请政治、商业、科技、文化领域的佼佼者，给毕业生们提供进入社会前的嘱托。这些名流不仅以被邀演讲为荣幸，在演讲中也会透露很多人生智慧和经验教训。5月28日，康奈尔大学邀请了好莱坞文凭收割机詹姆斯·弗兰科做此次毕业演讲。

P.S. 公众后台回复“毕业演讲”，查看大学经典毕业演讲。

詹姆斯·弗兰科（James Franco），1978年4月19日出生于美国加利福尼亚州帕罗奥图，美国电影演员、导演、教师、作家、艺术家。代表作有 《蜘蛛侠》《127小时》《魔境仙踪》等。他拥有一个学士学位，以及包括哥伦比亚大学和纽约大学在内的4个硕士学位和其他一些艺术类学位，被誉为“好莱坞文凭收割机”。他2010年被耶鲁录取，目前在读博士。同时他也在纽约大学和UCLA任教授课。

教育背景：

耶鲁大学 ／ 文学博士在读

加州大学洛杉矶分校 ／ 文学学士

哥伦比亚大学 ／ 文学硕士

布鲁克林大学 ／ 文学硕士

纽约大学 ／ 电影学硕士

北卡罗来纳州沃伦威尔逊学院 ／ 文学硕士

罗德岛设计学院 ／ 主修数码艺术

詹姆斯·弗兰科在康奈尔大学2016年毕业典礼发表演讲，演讲中并没有过多的提及他所获得的学术成就和演艺光环，而是通过自身的经历很诚恳地说了一些关于追逐梦想与平衡现实的感悟，或许会对你有所启发。

以下为詹姆斯·弗兰科在康奈尔大学2016年毕业典礼上的演讲全文：

谢谢大家～

很荣幸能做此次演讲。我想简单地和你们分享一些自己的经历。

二十年前，康奈尔大学录取了我，我差一点就成为了这里的学生。至今我还时常向别人提起我曾被常春藤名校录取，因为那真的太令人印象深刻了。尽管地处一个寒冷的偏远郊区，但这并不妨碍它成为常春藤名校。

但是在高中毕业后，我并没有离开加利福利亚。因为不想面对冬天凛冽的寒风，我选择了阳光相对充裕的UCLA（加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校）而放弃了康奈尔大学。从那时候我去过很多学校，也参加过很多毕业典礼，精彩的，无聊的都有。

学生时期印象最深的就是就是史蒂夫·乔布斯参加了我的高中毕业典礼，因为他的女儿是我的同班同学。他告诉我们，在离开里德学院之前曾听了一堂书法课，并产生了浓厚的兴趣，现在的Mac用户还能用到他设计的字体。学习书法，找到热爱的事儿，将它当作人生重要的一课。或许将来有一天你也可以有一部关于自己的电影（《史蒂夫·乔布斯》是阿伦·索尔金根据传记改编的一部电影，由迈克尔·法斯宾担任主演）。

但无论如何，这是你的第一个毕业典礼， 你也许无法记住太多我今天说过的话，但是不要担心。尽管如此，我还是想尽我所能和大家分享一些肺腑之言。

如果你对我有过一些了解，你可能知道我曾出演过一系列关于吸大麻的角色。事实上，很多人都是通过这一点才认识我的。我不知道是否应该接受那些对我演技的赞美——因为我真的不抽大麻——或许可能是我在《菠萝快车》《世界末日》中的表现太像是本色演出。

但实际上，在成年后的大多数时间里，我并没有在寻求出口，恰恰相反，我一直以来都在竭尽全力寻求入口。在没有入读常春藤盟校后，我从UCLA辍学了，因为我明白我想成为一名演员但学的不是相关专业。所以我去了圣费尔南多的一所演艺学校。我的父母表示如果我不安心上大学他们将不再资助我，因此我找了一份工作也是当时唯一愿意雇佣我的： 麦当劳。你不难想象，我的父母有多不解，他们儿子竟然放弃了一流的教育机会而选择去餐厅当小工。

那一刻，我知道自己无论如何都要成为演员，不惜一切代价。但是我没有意识到其实可以把演戏和上学两者兼顾。如果时光可以倒流我会对当时的自己说，“哥们，你只能去一所学校吗？你不能同时选择演戏和上学吗？”

现在，如果你对我的了解不再只是一个扮演后继者和白痴的怪咖，我会深感欣慰。在辍学之后，我在麦当劳拼命工作，在表演方面加倍努力。我没有选择安逸而是去追逐我的梦想，所以我必须更加努力。没有人逼我当演员，你真正想做的事又何来勉强呢？

如果不通过训练，你将无法成为奥运选手驰骋赛场。如果不学习元素周期表，你将无法成为生物化学家胜任这些伟大的制药工作。如果你想追随自己喜爱的事，很简单，你必须要下苦功夫。

想在电影行业中闯出自己的一片天地实属不易。我明白如果我想要有所作为，我必须完全投入。打工的时候，我会见缝插针和同学排演几幕戏。如果我在窗口接单，我就会试着练习用不同口音对话。“欢迎来到麦当劳，有什么需要帮忙的吗？”

幸运的是，三个月之后我代言了一家披萨店，不用再在麦当劳打工了。另一方面，我打算结束近八年的演艺学院生活。现在，我只想要攻读博士学位。甚至在我当演员的时候，我就想要回归校园。在《怪胎与书呆》中，我因出演詹姆斯·迪恩一角获得了金球奖。在那之后，我参演了《蜘蛛侠》系列电影。

之所以说这些是因为在成为演员之前，我就是一个对电影疯狂着迷的人，我很想成为影片中的一员却不知道应该怎么做。回想我生命中的那段时光，可以看出我是一个有一定表演天赋的人，经过几年的努力，天赋发展成为了一种技能。我努力付出，并有所收获。

经过八年的职业演员生涯后，我意识到自己并没有满足。外界看来，我似乎拥有了一切。我的演艺生涯顺风顺水，我参演了《蜘蛛侠》，我曾和罗伯特·德尼罗、威廉·达福、克里斯特·邓斯特等著名演员合作过。但是，我并未就此停下脚步。

经常能听到“你就是演蜘蛛侠的那个人吗？太酷了～”之类的话语，但实际上，这令我苦闷极了。作为一名演员，我无法去做所有我感兴趣的事。糟糕的是，我还不能因此抱怨。

因此，我回到了校园，这个改变我人生的地方。当我第一次踏入校园时，我把它当作对父母的妥协。但是，当我重新回到校园之时，我觉得是为了自己。一切都变得不一样，我渴望通过学习让自己更充实。

如果你对我了解颇多，你可能知道在那之后我还去了很多其他学校。我乐在其中。我想应该很多人对此感到不解。但是我发觉生活没有固定的轨迹，它随时可能发生变化。我没必要墨守成规，我应该不断地学习新东西。

当我回到校园，我学了很多我感兴趣的东西，并接触到了这些领域中的优秀人士。我几乎做了所有我感兴趣的事情。我或许会拒绝主持奥斯卡这件事，我这么做的原因在于我一直在追求自己感兴趣的事情，这些事情让我为之振奋，我的人生应由自己主宰。

这就是来自我的一点人生感悟。不要惧怕成为“新手”，不要因为起步艰难而将起点变成了终点。你们不必像我一样不知所措，去每所学校学习。不过，试着学习乔布斯。他隔一段时间，都会去参加书法课，因为你不知道现在学的这些或许会有一天让你受益匪浅。试想一下，如果当初乔布斯没有参加那个课程，我们也不会有Cambria and Baskerville Old Face, Helvetica, Courier and Techno Medium or Lucida Sans Unicode等等这些字体了。

在这里我有几点小建议，我想它们会让生活变得更美好。

找到与你志同道合的伙伴

和别人一起奋斗生活将会更美好。如果你喜欢独处，也没有关系。我曾经也是一个独来独往的人。但是，如果你能找到一群志同道合的伙伴，生活只会更好。他们会给你回应，激励你，同时他们也希望自己比你更优秀，这也能激发你的斗志，让你变得更优秀。

做你热爱的事，哪怕只是一点点

如果你需要通过做些别的来支持自己热爱的事，那就去做吧，就像我曾经在麦当劳打工那样。如果你真正热爱一件事，你将会倾尽全力。我想，如果年轻的时候我没有出演《怪胎与书呆》，我可能没有机会跨入好莱坞。我可能还在拍电影，哪怕它意味着我还是要用别的方式谋生。

做你能全情投入的事，不要只是把他们当做副业

如果你发现自己落入俗套，不妨试着开辟一条新路。永远不要让害怕和恐惧左右你追求心中所爱。

不吝啬每一点分享，学会慷慨

最后，我发现对我来说最重要的是——学会慷慨。你们是常春藤名校的精英。毫无疑问，坐在这里表明你们都非常努力。现在你们通过了重重考验，将变得更加睿智。

并不是每个人都有机会享受这样的教育。所以现在你们有这个机会，是时候做点回馈了。我教了六年书，不是因为教师这份工作，而是我感觉这是一生中做过最充实的事情之一。我花了太多的精力在自己身上，努力成为演员、诗人、小说家和画家，在做了所有一切之后我恍然明白，有机会回馈也是在帮助别人实现梦想。这让我无比欣慰。

我参演过最轰动的大片，被邀请参加Lady Gaga三十岁生日派对，上过美国几乎一半的大学…… 最让我感到满足的事情是我可以把自己所学、所想、所悟传授给别人。祝贺在座所有毕业生！你们是国家的骄傲！所以，请走出去，慷慨地分享吧！

谢谢～

附英文全文：

Thank you. I’m honored. I’m honored to be here. I’ll just say a few things about myself. That’s all I really know about. And it’ll be brief.

 

Thank you. Twenty years ago, I was almost a student here. Cornell University actually accepted me. I still tell people that I was accepted at an Ivy League school because, well, that’s very impressive. It was the cold one in the middle of nowhere, but it was still an Ivy.

 

But way back when I graduated high school, I didn’t leave California to join all the bright students here wearing face masks in the winter to keep out the wind chill. I went to sunny UCLA. Since then, I’ve been to a ton of schools and a bunch of these graduations. Some good, some boring.

 

And being someone who’s probably been to more of these than most, at least as a student, I can tell you that I remember very little from any of them, except for my high school graduation, when Steve Jobs spoke because his daughter was in my class. And he told us that, before dropping out of Reed, he took a calligraphy class, which led to all the different fonts that are now available to Mac users. So take that as a lesson. Learn calligraphy, and maybe you, too, will one day have a movie made about you starring Michael Fassbender.

 

But anyway, this being only your first college graduation, take it from me – you won’t remember much of what I say today, but don’t worry. Despite that, I’ll still try to give you some of my best wisdom.
 
Now, if you know anything about me, you probably know that I’ve played a lot of characters who actively partake in the use of marijuana. Actually, that’s often the only thing that people know about me. And I don’t know whether I should take that as a compliment of my acting abilities – because I actually don’t smoke weed – or if I just have a naturally stonerish demeanor that lends itself to movies like Pineapple Express and This is the End. Resting stoned face, you could call it.

 

But in fact, for most of my adult life, I’ve done the opposite of checking out. I’ve been struggling to find a way to check in. After not enrolling in an Ivy League school, I dropped out of UCLA because I knew that I wanted to be an actor and I wasn’t in their theater program. So I went to an acting school in the San Fernando Valley. My parents said that they would no longer support me if I wasn’t in college, so I got a job at the only place that would hire me: McDonald’s. And as you can imagine, my parents were very proud of their son, who left a first-class education to work at the drive-thru window.

 

But at the time, I knew that I wanted to be an actor at any cost. But what I didn’t know was that I could actually act and go to school at the same time. If the me today could pull a Matthew McConaughey and talk to the James Franco of the past, I would say, “Dude, you only went to one school? You couldn’t act and go to school?”

 

Now, if you know anything more about me beyond an odd talent for playing stoners and idiots, it’s that I do a lot of things. After dropping out of school for McDonald’s, I worked my ass off in acting school. I’d chosen not to play it safe and to follow my dreams, so I reasoned that I’d better work hard at it. No one was going to beg me to be an actor, just as no one will really beg you to do anything you actually want to do.

 

Olympic runner? Well, if you don’t train, it ain’t gonna happen. Biochemist? If you don’t study that periodic table, you’re not gonna get those great pharmaceutical jobs. And if you want to go after something you love, it’s simple – you have to work at it.

 

The film business is such a hard business to break into, I knew that if I was going to get anywhere, I needed to devote myself completely. If I wasn’t taking orders at the drive-thru, I was rehearsing scenes with my classmates. And often, if I was at the drive-thru window, I was practicing different accents. “Welcome to McDonald’s, may I help you?”

 

Now, fortunately, I booked a Pizza Hut commercial after three months, and I didn’t have to work at McDonald’s anymore. But I ended up going to acting school for eight years. Now, that’s about as long as it takes to become a doctor. And even after I started working regularly as an actor, I went back to class. During Freaks and Geeks, I went. I went after I won the Golden Globe for playing James Dean. I went while I was filming all the Spider-Man films.

 

And I say this because there was a time when I wasn’t an actor, when I was just a guy who loved movies and wanted to be a part of them, but didn’t know how. And I can look back on that time in my life and see that I was a person who had a certain level of talent and that, after years of hard work, that talent was developed into a skill that I could wield. I worked hard at something, and I saw results.

 

Now, the problem was that, after eight years of acting professionally, I realized that I wasn’t content. On the outside, it seemed that I had everything one could want. I was supporting myself as an actor, I was working on Spider-Man, I was working with people like Robert De Niro, Willem Dafoe and Kirsten Dunst. But I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was off. I wanted something more.

 

And what was worse was that I couldn’t complain about it because, well, I’d look like a douche. “Oh, poor you, you have to act in Spider-Man? Boo-hoo.” But in fact, I felt trapped. As an actor, I wasn’t allowed to do all the things I was interested in.

 

So I went back to school, and that’s where my life changed. When I’d been at school the first time, I was there as a compromise with my parents. But when I went back, I was there for myself. And that made all the difference. I wanted to learn.

 

And if you know anything else about me, you’ll know that I went to a lot of schools after that. I was addicted. I think some people actually wanted to put me away. But what I found was that life is not a fixed journey, it is open. I didn’t have to stay one thing; I could always be learning.

 

After going back to school, I studied all the things I was interested in with incredible people in each of those fields. And now I not only act, I do – well, I do everything. Well, not really, but I do everything that I’m interested in. Well, almost everything. I probably could have said no to that hosting the Oscars thing. But the point I’m making is that, because I pursue what interests me and excites me, my life is mine to control.

 

And that’s my little bit of wisdom to you. Don’t be afraid to be beginners. Don’t think that this marks the end of your learning. This should be the start. Now, you don’t have to lose your mind and go to every school like I did, but be a little bit like Steve Jobs. Every once in a while, try a calligraphy class because you don’t know where it will lead. Just think – if Steve hadn’t taken that class, we wouldn’t have Cambria and Baskerville Old Face, Helvetica, Courier and Techno Medium or Lucida Sans Unicode.

 

Now, here’s just a few more suggestions that I think will make life better.

 

Find your gang. Life is better when it is in the company of others. If you’re a loner, that’s fine. I was a loner once, too. But you will only get better at whatever it is you do if you have a group of similarly engaged people. They will give you feedback, inspire you and hopefully do better work than you, and push you to rise to their level.

 

Do what you love, at least a little bit. And if you have to do something else in order to support what you love, do it. Hell, work at McDonald’s. And if you really love something, you’ll do whatever it takes to support that thing. I like to think that, if I hadn’t been cast in Freaks and Geeks when I was young and just didn’t quite get a leg up in a Hollywood, that I would still be making movies in some way or another, even if it meant I made my living by other means.

 

Do what you have to do to work on your passions. Just don’t get stuck in the side job. And if you find that you’ve worked yourself in a well-worn groove, then be a beginner at something. And don’t ever let fear or the little demon that says you ought to do this and you shouldn’t do that ever keep you from pursuing what you love.

 

And finally, I found that this is the most important to me – be generous. You are the elite of the nation. You’re Ivy League, baby. You’ve obviously worked very hard to even be admitted here. And now that you’ve gone through the gauntlet, you’re even smarter.

 

Not everyone gets to have such an education. So when you have the chance, when you’re that amazing biochemist or out in Wall Street snorting cocaine off hookers with Leonardo DiCaprio, take a little time to give back. I’ve been teaching for the past six years. Not because I have to – I have a job – but because it’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. I’ve spent so much of my life focused on myself, developing myself as an actor and a poet and novelist and painter and whatever – you get the point – after doing all that, the opportunity to give back, to help others achieve their dreams is such a relief.

 

From someone who’s been in some of the biggest movies ever made, who got invited to Lady Gaga’s 30th birthday party, who’s gone to half the colleges in the United States, one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done is give myself to others. So congratulations to all of you. You are the best our country has to offer. So please, go out, be generous and be good. Thank you.