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Robert Strauss
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I said, "There is one thing I want," and he said, "What's that?" I said, "Well, when you start appointing those judges and filling these commissions and when people out of the Dallas establishment come to call on you, just listen to them and say, 'Well, I've got your suggestions now, and I'm certainly going to consider them, and I'll discuss it with Bob Strauss the first chance I get, and you'll hear from him or me." And he started laughing, and he said, "Are you kidding?" And I said, "That's all I want, John. Just say, 'Well, I want to discuss it with Strauss.'" Of course, nothing could have pleased me more, and I was so vain, anyway, about it and annoyed with them for ten years or more of what I thought was neglect or abuse or whatever you'd call it. They really were nice people, they just didn't care for me. It wasn't mutual. I was ready to join the crowd, but the crowd didn't want me, to be very blunt about it. But Connally did that a couple times, and that's all I needed, and I liked it. It made the whole thing worthwhile.
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John Sulston
Nobel Prize in Medicine
There was one moment, in particular, where I remember asking whether I ought to do what I was doing. But it wasn't working on the worm as a whole, it was following a cell lineage. There came a point, because one of the things that I learned to do, and became my sort of identification for a while, with the worm, was looking to see how the first cell divides to two. Each of those divide again to get the pattern of cell divisions. It sounds pretty unimportant, but the key thing is that one wants that pattern to provide the map, as it were, onto which we are going to place the gene activities. Because in the end, something develops, as we do, from a single cell, through lots and lots of cell divisions to multiple cells, through a whole series of signals, of controls. We wanted to find out what those controls were. People were doing it in other organisms, too. People were looking at the fruit fly, for example, very productively. But the worm had its own particular power, which is that you could follow the cell lineage, because it was constant from one out to about a thousand cells, when the thing is finally mature. So I, along with some colleagues, followed that process. And I came to a point where I knew that I had all the techniques I needed to finish the most difficult part of it, which was looking to see what happened in the egg. But I also could calculate that it was going to take me one and a half years of just sitting every day and looking down the microscope. I talked to John White about it -- he was my colleague working on the anatomy of the worm -- and I said to John, "Is it worthwhile? Do I really have to spend a year and a half looking down the microscope?" John said, "Yes, you can do it. You should do it. We need it." And so, with that sort of encouragement from him, Bob Horvitz and others, I just did it. But that was a moment when you said, "Well, is it really worthwhile doing what I'm doing? And I couldn't be certain, and lots of people were a little skeptical. But anyway, I did it, and it turned out to be a useful body of knowledge.
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Hilary Swank
Two Oscars for Best Actress
That preparation for me was so important in who I am today, because if I woke up in the morning, I ached everywhere. Everything. I just thought, "I'm so tired right now, and I can't go. I can't train today, I can't." And with that attitude, I wasn't growing. With that attitude, I was staying where I was, and I realized that the biggest obstacle was my mind. It was the biggest obstacle, and if I could get out of the way of myself, I would grow. So every time I had that attitude, I changed it, and I'd say, "You can. Today you can, and take it one day at a time, and today, I'm going to get up and I'm not going to think about the other six days of this week. I'm going to get up right now, and I'm going to go to the gym, and I'm going to learn about my boxing, and I'm going to be in the moment." You know, in anything, you hit a wall, and then you have to break through it, and I just had to get out of my own way.
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Hilary Swank
Two Oscars for Best Actress
Hilary Swank: Staph is very dangerous. When I got to my doctor's, he said, "Put your foot down. Stand up." Not on it, but to stand up. "Put your foot down. I'll be right back in." He came back in, and he said, "This is very serious. You have to stop boxing immediately, and you are going to stay right here." He drew a line on my leg, so it wouldn't go above that, because if that gets to your heart, you die. So if that infection makes it up to your heart, that's it. So obviously, it was devastating news to me that I wasn't going to be able to box, and I only had this limited amount of time. So he said, "I can't express to you " I said, "I need to box. I need to box. Two days? Will it be over in two days?" and he said, "Listen to me. You have to stop. This is life-threatening. You have to stop. Just stop. Get your infection, until it's gone, and then you can go training again." So I took most of the advice. When I felt like the line was gone and it wasn't red anymore, I couldn't box still 'cause I couldn't pivot on it, but I was still doing weight training. My trainer would piggyback me to the gym, and I'd do everything I could where I wasn't standing on it. I was doing all my upper body and my sit-ups, and then he'd piggyback me back to my place.
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Hilary Swank
Two Oscars for Best Actress
Hilary Swank: I was cast on Beverly Hills, 90210 when it was in its eighth season and no one watched it anymore. Yet, I was still very grateful for the job. I never, ever knocked an opportunity to learn my craft. I did a handful -- every single year -- I'd do a pilot. You know, a pilot is something that you get that they make, and they only pick up maybe four of them. They probably make 50 of them. So every year, I was thankful enough to get a pilot. Not all of them obviously got picked up, but then I got on 90210, and I was very grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn, even though it was something that was kind of old news. I signed a two-year contract, which is a very big deal. As a working actor, you have that security. I would say security is not the number one thing that most actors have, 'cause you never know what's going to happen tomorrow. So having a two-year contract was actually wonderful. It gave me the opportunity, like I said, to continue to grown and learn. And about maybe 14 episodes into the first year, I was fired. I remember going in and them saying, "This isn't really working. It's not working." I was devastated. I went home, and I thought, "I'm not good enough for 90210 in the eighth season! What does that say about me?" It's actually one of those great lessons in trusting fate, because about maybe four months later, I got Boys Don't Cry, and I wouldn't have been able to do that, had I not been fired.
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Hilary Swank
Two Oscars for Best Actress
There's criticism everywhere, and not all of it's constructive. So you walk a fine line of trying to figure out what is healthy and what's not. If someone says, "Your lips are too big," which I've heard, was that constructive? Is there anything I can do about that? No. If someone says, "We feel you're too half-hour," that's great that that's their opinion and that's why I didn't get that job, but I'm not going to take that upon myself and say, "Okay. Well, then I'm just going to do comedy, and I'm only going to go in for comedy." So it's a fine line of figuring out what do you take in and have to help you grow. It's a business, too. You can't close off and become bitter at things that people say, even though you might not always want to hear it. So I would take some of the things in, and incorporate that into my craft, or to my auditioning, or to whatever it may be. And then other things, I'd have to really say, "Oh, that really stings. That's a real bummer to hear that," but not allow it to close me up, to continue to stay open, and say, "But that's their opinion."
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Hilary Swank
Two Oscars for Best Actress
After I won my first Academy Award, I thought, "Wow, everything's going to change. I'm going to get so many offers, I'm not even going to have time to read everything, and I'm going to get all of these opportunities to work with people who inspire me and finally get real quality material." Yes, that was partly the case, but what I realized was my first role was a role where people saw me as looking like a boy. So that was their first impression of me. Well, of course, that's not who I am. I had long hair, and I'm a girl before I got the role, but I realized that that role, being everyone's first impression, that I had a lot to prove. I still had a lot to prove. They didn't see me as the girl next door or the funny girl or the pretty girl, and that I understand. And I didn't become angry about it. I said, "Wow, well now my job is to continue to go in, to meet people, to read things, to fight for things, to prove that I'm not just that, that I can be so much more." It's a constant, constant job. It's not easy for me. You know, even after Million Dollar Baby, there are still people who say, "Well, I don't really see her in this role," and I have to go in, and I have to persuade them and talk to them and tell them why I am.
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