Tom Cruise surprised a class of 60 acting students at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Studio in Santa Monica, Calif. and offered some valuable words of wisdom during his "stirring" commencement speech.
“He said that when you do finally get the chance of being in a movie, don’t spend the time in the trailer,” one witness told the NY Post. “He said you need to experience everything on the movie, talk to everyone on the crew, the grips, everyone. Learn everything you can. You will never get that time back.”
The witness added, “He talked about trying to be as prepared as possible, and that you can only depend on yourself.”
Cruise remembered his first film role in "Taps" fondly, telling the group, “At night, I couldn’t sleep because I thought, ‘This is my dream.’”
But Cruise says he has remained in control of his longstanding career, telling the grads “The thing that I always felt about myself in life is that I’m making the decisions, for better or worse, right or wrong.”
“It was one of the most inspiring speeches we’ve had,” said a source at the boutique school. “It was so much more than a lecture about what to do in an audition.”
Watch Cruise's surprise speech below:
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