Slideshow | Photography by Tommy Leonardi C’89
Actress, filmmaker, and Penn alumna Elizabeth Banks tells the Class of 2025 to “pursue anything and everything that scares you with absolute vigor.”
When Elizabeth Banks C’96 was a Penn undergraduate, she faced what felt like an impossible choice at the time.
While taking a course that only met once a week on Fridays, she asked the professor if she could miss one class to attend a cousin’s wedding in Tennessee. She was told that she could but doing so would result in a half-grade deduction, just as any absence would. Banks desperately pleaded not to lose her A and offered to make up any work she might miss—to no avail.
“Meanwhile, [the professor] was so blasé about the entire interaction because, in her mind, she was an adult talking to another adult,” Banks, an acclaimed actress and filmmaker, recalled during the Penn commencement address she delivered on May 19. “Which honestly felt like news to me. I still felt like a kid—and maybe some of you do too—but she was telling me, ‘No, you’re an adult. You have agency.’ What a powerful thing to tell a young person.”
That lesson in “adulting” proved vital to Banks, who said she “took the hit” and road-tripped to the wedding with her family, including her grandmother, who died soon after. The cousin who got married “is gone now too,” Banks said.
“I’ve never regretted that choice,” Banks told about 6,000 graduates assembled at Franklin Field for the University’s 269th Commencement. “I didn’t graduate summa cum laude—and that’s never come up. Not once. The profound lesson I learned through all of this was that our values conflict sometimes. And it’s making choices in those moments that help you clarify who you are and what you value in this world. That’s adulting … the series of decisions you make when your values conflict. GPA or family. Creativity or security. Loyalty or personal growth. Love or money. Your path is guaranteed to be paved with these decisions.”
While she called that GPA versus family choice one of the “most impactful lessons” from her time at Penn, she shared other amusing college anecdotes with the students graduating almost 30 years after she collected her own diploma (“very hungover in my cap and gown, which I wore over a black bikini because it’s hella hot on this field.”) Some may have surprised the Zoomers, like the trips she had to make to Houston Hall in order to check her email. Others probably felt more familiar, like learning from professors about the dangers of climate change and why marijuana legalization is good public policy. “We knew this 30 years ago,” she deadpanned.
Though she joked she may have looked the part of “a rich girl,” Banks actually came to Penn as “a scholarship kid, first gen, loaded up on Pell grants and work study, which is actually quite isolating,” she said. “I never went on a spring break. I never studied abroad. I never had an unpaid internship.” A rusted bike she found in the basement of a frat house became her mode of transportation for three years. She strove to get “every penny’s worth of my tuition” because, believing that the real division in this country is economic, “I came here to use the best tool for class migration that’s ever existed: higher education,” she said. “When people ask me when I knew I wanted to be an actor, my answer is, ‘When I got paid for it.’”
Banks [“How to Succeed in Show Business by Really, Really Trying,” Jan|Feb 2010] has enjoyed a fruitful acting career since her undergraduate days at Penn, making her feature film debut in Wet Hot American Summer before appearing in the Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect movie franchises. She made her directorial debut in Pitch Perfect 2, which had the highest opening weekend ticket sales for a musical when it was released in 2015 and the second-largest opening for a female director. She has since directed films such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Cocaine Bear (2023), both of which were produced by the production company she cofounded with her husband Max Handelman C’95, whom she met at Penn.
“I used my agency to create my own opportunities,” Banks said. “Rather than wait for those great acting gigs, I started producing, writing, directing, hosting a game show, becoming an investor and an entrepreneur, podcasting. Was this all in response to overwhelming disappointment? Yeah! Failure is a great motivator.”
She told members of the Class of 2025 that they will likely fail at some point too—“which,” she noted, “is your best opportunity to clarify what it is you really want and pivot if you have to.” And she encouraged them to lean on the “safety net” that an Ivy League degree—and the people that “encouraged you, loved you, bandaged your skinned knee, fed you, taught you” along the way—affords. “Your job, from here on out, is to pursue anything and everything that scares you with absolute vigor—because you have that safety net,” Banks said. “So many of you are rightfully excited about what’s next and worried about what you don’t have yet—so let this be a reminder to appreciate what you’ve already got. You have nothing to lose. You have loads of time, I promise. Use that freedom. Because your life isn’t determined by your first job, or your second.”
Banks concluded her speech by praising her husband Handelman, whom she met “on 40th and Spruce on a steamy evening in 1992” and has been her “true safety net” because “cocreating your dream life and parenting kids is unfathomable with anybody who isn’t going to catch you when you inevitably fall.” An activist for women’s rights and reproductive rights, Banks also called “access to reproductive healthcare the ultimate safety net.” She signed off with a nod to the Hunger Games character she portrayed, Effie Trinket: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
In his Commencement remarks, Penn President J. Larry Jameson called on graduates to always strive for curiosity, creativity, and self-improvement. “Each of us and everything we do will be, to some extent, imperfect—with one exception: this year’s flawless season for our men’s squash team,” Jameson said, shouting out the two-time defending national champion Quakers. “In already uncertain times, our flaws and failures can spark anxiety. That fear can hold us back. But the point is not perfection; it is that we always strive to be better. Curiosity, creativity, and self-improvement: these are Penn values. They are your values. Use them often, keep them sharp, and they will serve you well.”
Before the graduates exited the stadium to celebrate with their families, University chaplain and vice president for social equity and community Charles “Chaz” Howard C’00 offered advice he gathered from the former classmates he’d reconnected with at his 25th reunion two days earlier.
“Be kind. Be curious. Be a good friend. Be a healer. Be your authentic self. Be your best self,” Howard said. “Be gentle with yourself. Try not to compare yourself to others. Be balanced. Trust your gut. Remember that you are the dream of your ancestors. Don’t underestimate what can be accomplished in one generation. Travel the world. Invest in yourself. Surrender to opportunity daily. Laugh a lot.
“And savor life every day—because you blink and you’re suddenly at your 25th reunion.”
—DZ
