Denzel tells Penn grads to ‘fall forward’

Recalling his own setbacks, actor Denzel Washington urged graduating University of Pennsylvania students this morning to not underestimate the importance of taking risks.

He said his own struggle to find success began with a lot of uncertainty as a student at Fordham University and then after he stumbled upon acting.

Washington recalled how he failed again and again at auditions, especially one crazy attempt to get a role in a musical - even though he couldn't sing.

But three decades later, in the very same theater, he appeared in Fences on Broadway, because he never gave up.

Washington, named best actor for 2001's Training Day, shot scenes for Philadelphia (1993) and Fallen (1998) in Philadelphia. In her remarks, University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann mentioned Washington's latest film, as she told the graduates to be "unstoppable."

Washington, whose son Malcolm is an undergrad at Penn, began with mentions of local color - "magic meatballs" and "Kweder who sings bad songs over at Smokes on Tuesday night" and how the squirrel population has "gone bananas."

But then he spoke of fearing to make a fool of himself - and then deciding that was exactly why had to come.

"I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks," he said.

Some people say that you always need something to fall back on, but he never understood that, he said.

"I want to fall forward. I figure at least this way I'll see what I'm going to hit," he said.

One reason "you've got to take risks," he said, is that "you will fail at some point in your life. You will lose. You will suck at something. . . . I'm telling you, embrace it. Because it's inevitable."

After not getting that musical role, "I didn't quit. I didn't fall back," he said, adding he "prayed and prayed" and "continued to fail and fail and fail, but it didn't matter."

"You hang around the barber shop long enough, sooner or later you're going to get a haircut," he said.

Besides, if you don't fail, you're not even trying, he said.

His shared a saying from his wife: "To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did."

You don't want to have ghosts of "unfilled potential" hanging around your deathbed someday, "angry, disappointed and upset," he said.

"The world needs your talents, and does it ever."

When he was about 20, an old woman said to him, "Young boy, I have a prophecy, a spiritual prophecy. You are going to travel the world and speak to millions of people."

Somehow she saw potential in him that he couldn't see back then.

The actor said he saw that same potential out there in the assembled graduates.

"I see you today," he said, " . . . and I love what I see."

Washington was the last of a very distinguished list of recipients of honorary degrees (www.upenn.edu/commencement/event/honbio.html), including Penn professor emeritus Renée C. Fox, Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; renowned author Joyce Carol Oates; entrepreneur turned Africa activist Mo Ibrahim; and Nobel Prize winner Ei-ichi Negishi.