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Suzanne Farrell
Ballerina Extraordinaire
It took me a long time to admit that I had arthritis, and that it was not going to ever get better. But strangely enough, when I got on stage, I had no pain, because the moment when I was out there was so important and the "now" of the situation was the only thing that mattered, that my body rallied somehow. We have these powers within us, you know, endorphins. The body can do amazing things in a situation when it is really called upon. And so I remained dancing and performing so that I didn't have the pain.
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Suzanne Farrell
Ballerina Extraordinaire
I had no choice and so I had the operation. I was very happy when I went in, and happy when I came out. Because suddenly I saw that I would live my life, instead of watch it go by, which was the way it had become lately in that situation. And so, of course, the doctor said I would never dance again. But I wanted to. But I didn't think about dancing again, I just thought about getting well. I put all my energies into the moment that I was now living in, and that was getting well. And I thought, if God wanted me to dance, He will let me dance.
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Sally Field
Two Oscars for Best Actress
Sally Field: He was probably one of the finest stuntmen that ever lived, athletically gifted beyond belief, and a gorgeous male. He would say to me, as this little 15-year-old girl, pointing at me in this big threatening fashion, that he had this magic to identify everyone's Achilles heel, and I was like, "Wow! What is that?" And that is to identify where it is you had this deep flaw. And if he were able to tell you what that deep personal flaw was, it would destroy you, because you wouldn't be able to handle that truth. And I remember sitting there hearing that at 15, going, "Bullshit." Part of me when -- first of all, I'm not going to believe that. Second of all, could it possibly be true? Could there be something about me that I don't see that's so horrifying that I don't want to know, that if he told me, it would destroy me? And I think what it did is it made me so that every flaw that I had -- every weakness I had, every part of me that I didn't want to see -- it was going to be what I rode in with first. No one was going to be able to say anything to me that I didn't already know and accept about myself. So, I think a lot of the things that were damaging to maybe my brother, ultimately turned out for me to be the fight, the part of me that just simply wouldn't sit still. Even to this day, I have to watch myself. If someone says something that triggers me I'll come flaring up in this way that I don't want to be that person. That's not what I want to be. But it triggers this old language that I had of survival and I have used it in my acting. It is my anger, my fury, my deep resentment at being manipulated like that. I have learned to own it, to use it to propel me. And I think some of my siblings, it really was damaging.
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Sally Field
Two Oscars for Best Actress
I was too young to know that I should be desperately, deeply, profoundly frightened. I was just too young to know that what I was doing couldn't it was going to destroy me. And I just kind of blithely went along, because it's what I had done in high school to survive, and I was really good at that. I was really good in high school, so surely I was really good here, and didn't know to be as terrified as I probably should've been. I knew that Gidget was a character I loved. I had watched the movies with Sandra Dee, and oh my gosh, it was so great. Gee whiz, I wanted to be that. She was so cute and gosh so I was simply lost in that. I was simply lost in the amazing fun. I got to do that, and couldn't really incorporate in my head the magnitude, in that it was going to reach millions and millions of people. But something in me had some kind of strength, that I don't know how or why. I don't know why, except that I had this gift early on. I had a gift and it held me, this little sparkling gift that I had when I left my body. It held me safe. It said, "I'll be with you, you'll be fine, you'll come home to us and you'll be fine." And it's always been there.
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Sally Field
Two Oscars for Best Actress
I turned it down. It took great strength. I was already living on my own, in an apartment by myself down the road and not that far away, and I said, "No, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that." You know, now, very brave of me. I'm going to find something else I want to do. And my stepfather came over to my apartment one time and told me -- and I subsequently realized it was because the producer, Harry Ackerman, had called him to do it, so I felt betrayed ultimately. He'd said that I should do it because I may never work again. I mean those were like I didn't know it then. I should've burst out laughing because that's like the cliché in the town. You know, like, "Shall we lunch?" you know. It's like a cliché, "You'll never work again." But, I was too young to know that I should've laughed. Instead I got scared. And I thought, "God, really?" and called them up and said, "I guess I should do this." They were already filming the pilot with somebody else and they fired her, and they put me in the next day and there it was. And I was really unhappy for all three years that I did it because a part of me knew why. I had listened to a voice of fear. It changed my life. It changed my life. I knew then that that voice of fear was something that I must never listen to -- fear of that. I must go to what desperately frightens me. [What] desperately frightens me is the chance of failure, is the chance of not knowing. But not going to what is safe, and that's what my stepfather had urged me to do. And I tried to learn that.
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Judah Folkman
Cancer Research
In the '70s, there was post doctoral fellows who would apply, who were told not to come to our laboratory. They said, "That's very controversial, very controversial," and so nothing scares a young post-doc worse than "very controversial," because he doesn't want to commit his two years of his life, three years. And I remember it turned around with a couple of people. One was Michael Gimbroni, but another one was Robert Langer. Robert Langer came from MIT, number one in his class in chemical engineering in 1974. And we really needed help in chemical engineering, because we were trying to get these molecules to diffuse like tumors. And Langer said he had offers from everywhere, from MIT, from Shell Oil, from everywhere. And he was interested in biomedicine, and he was just going to stop in and say hello, but he said, "I have to warn you, I've been told by four professors at MIT don't come here, and never go to a medical school anyhow because they'll treat you like a technician if you're a chemical engineer." And I remember saying, "Why don't you come for six months and make up your own mind?" And that appealed to him, and he came and stayed two years, and within six years was a professor at MIT.
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