I got to Vassar which 43 years ago was a single-sex institution, like all the colleges in what they call the Seven Sisters, the female Ivy League and I made some very quick but lifelong and challenging friends. And with their help outside of any competition for boys, my brain woke up. I got up and I got outside myself and I found myself again. I didn't have to pretend, I could be goofy, vehement, aggressive, and slovenly and open and funny and tough and my friends let me. I didn't wash my hair for three weeks once. They accepted me like the Velveteen Rabbit. I became real instead of an imagined stuffed bunny, but I stockpiled that character from high school and I breathed life into her again some years later as Linda in the Deer Hunter. There is probably not one of you graduates it who has ever seen this film, but the Deer Hunter won best picture in 1978. Robert De Niro, Chris Walken, not funny at all. And I played Linda, a small town girl from a working class background, a lovely, quiet, hapless girl, who waited for the boy she loved to come back from the war in Vietnam.
43年前，我进入瓦萨女子学院，那时该校只招女生，当时人们把同类的几个学校称为“七姐妹联盟”，相当于女校版的“常春藤盟校”。在那儿，我很快结识了一些聪明的让我终身受益的至交。在她们的帮助下，我的大脑清醒过来，终于不再为了男孩子而竞争。我清醒了，逃离了那个假装的自己，我再也不必假装，我可以当笨蛋、发脾气、争强好胜、邋里邋遢、性格外向、逗趣或者咄咄逼人，有时很难对付，我的好友们一点儿也不介意。有一次，我三个星期没有洗头发，她们也像接受毛绒玩具兔一样接受了我。我变得真实起来，不再是假模假样的玩具毛绒兔。不过，我还是把高中假装的这个女孩形象储存在记忆里。后来拍《猎鹿人》时，我用这种形象来扮演片中的琳达。也许你们没有一个人看过这部电影，但是《猎鹿人》夺得了1978年奥斯卡最佳影片奖，罗伯特·德尼罗、克里斯·沃肯参与了表演，这是个很严肃的电影。我扮演的琳达就是一个蓝领阶级的小镇女孩，美丽、娴静，痴痴等待男友从越南战场回家。
