Sigourney Weaver shows her grit: "It's a good thing for me that Yale was so mean"

In a recent interview on NPR's Fresh Air, actress Sigourney Weaver described how she began acting. In the story, she discussed her discouraging experience at Yale Drama School. Weaver was clearly undeterred by the negative feedback; she has fashioned a stellar 30+ year career. More than that, she took that lesson and established a theater to provide a better environment for young actors - demonstrating resilience, grit and a long memory.

DAVIES: So what took you into acting?

WEAVER: Well, when I was at college I was an English major and on the side I did a lot of very irreverent, crazy theater with a wonderful group called The Company. We had a kind of covered wagon. We used to do commedia dell'arte all over the San Francisco Bay area. We did "King Lear." We did "Hamlet." We did, you know, we were fearless and we had nothing to do with any drama department. And when it came time for me to leave college - which was a scary moment - I quickly applied to drama schools, kind of as a lark, and I got in. Now...

DAVIES: To Yale.

WEAVER: ...I actually did these - yeah. To all of them, actually. Then I had a miserable time at Yale where they really were discouraging.

DAVIES: Hmm. In what way?

WEAVER: They told me I had no talent and I'd never get anywhere. You know, I am not alone. So many art schools believe that they need to tear down young people. They consider it a sort of rite of passage to kind of roll - steamroll you and crush you into the dust. And so that's why helped found The Flea Theater here in New York where we have currently, we have 90 young actors, brilliant, wonderful young actors. Very diverse. We just got a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. But so actually, it's a good thing it happened to me that Yale was so mean, because now I've been part of something that's created an alternative to drama school, which, as was always the case in so many businesses, you come into the theater and you learn by doing and it's an intergenerational thing. And I work at The Flea and we all inspire each other.

Other references to the value of grit to overcome obstacles and setbacks here.