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Actor Dame Janet Suzman
offers words of wisdom to graduates
RENOWNED actor Dame Janet Suzman
offered some words of advice to Edge Hill graduands from the Faculty of Arts and
Science as she was made an Honorary Doctor of arts. "Never use jargon, always express your thoughts with clarity and with
economy... Be as eccentric as you care to be, don't follow the sheep, don't eat
rubbish food, learn to cook and always be kind." She also advised them to look after the
"fabulously beautiful, frail yet
robust highly complex lonely planet of ours. We humanities graduates can
use our talents to alarm the thoughtless or the cynical about the dangers of the
earth's changing climate. This hugely expressive language of ours can be a
powerful tool to warn greedy profit gobblers and myopic short termists that
quick gains and amassed personal wealth are not worth the fatal costs to the
fabric of this precious earth unless usefully deployed."
Janet Suzman has remained 1 of the most respected classical stage actresses of
her time. After her professional stage debut with Billy Liar in 1962 she joined
the Royal Shakespeare Company and received rave notices for her Joan of Arc in
The War of the Roses. She made her official London debut in a production of A
Comedy of Errors (1963). Janet built up an impressive classical resumé
portraying most of Shakespeare's illustrious heroines and also appeared in
several BBC-TV versions of the classics.
In 1969 Janet married director Trevor Nunn and together they collaborated on
some of England's finest stage productions, notably Antony and Cleopatra (1972)
Titus Andronicus (1972) and Hello and Goodbye (1973), which won Janet the
Evening Standard award. She won a second for her role of Masha in the 1976
production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Later work included notable roles in
She Stoops to Conquer, The Good Woman of Setzuan and her Hedda Gabler.
In the early 1970s Janet branched out into films and, following an auspicious
turn in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg she won the coveted role of Czarina
Alexandra in the florid historical piece Nicholas and Ale, for which she was
nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, BAFTA and the Golden Globe.
She went on to grace a number of films including Voyage on Demand (1976),
Nijinsky (1980) and Priest of Love (1981).
In a reprise of her real life family's activism, Suzman co-starred in the
anti-apartheid film A Dry White Season (1989). In the 1980s Janet was inspired
to direct and coach. She was a visiting professor of drama at Westfield College,
London, and later returned to South Africa to provide multi ethnic castings in
versions of Shakespearean plays. In 2002 Janet returned to the RSC to perform in
The Hollow Crown, and most recently appeared in a London production of Whose
Life Is It Anyway? (2005) starring Kim Cattrall.
Suzman was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in
the 2011 Birthday Honours, is an Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute,
and was awarded the Pragnell Award for lifetime services to Shakespeare in 2012.
She left this afternoon's graduates with some thoughts about her own childhood
and when she woke up to the:- "rude shock" of what, at that time, was:-
"state supported prejudice."
She said:- "Racism, it is a scourge. It makes me angrier than anything
else we humans get up to. White is not always particularly wonderful. Often
quite the reverse. All racism is culturally acquired and it must be always
firmly rejected, because, a little bit of you will dies inside every time you
lack the courage to oppose it. I will always remember this day when you and I received our degrees from
this proudly forward looking place of education. I wish you good luck in all you
do. I can offer you no more than this. Just be useful, lead a useful life. And
enjoy it."
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