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Today, Sarah Jessica Parker has around a $200 million net worth, too many Manolo Blahniks to count, and a mega-mansion in Manhattan\u2019s West Village. But before becoming Carrie Bradshaw and earning more than $1 million per episode of And Just Like That<\/em>, the star says her family couldn\u2019t always afford electricity or to celebrate Christmas. Now, she\u2019s telling graduates that growing up in poverty motivated her to build the life she has today.<\/p>\n \u201cI am one of eight kids that struggled financially,\u201d Parker recently said in a commencement speech to Northwestern University students.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the most part, as children, we had what we needed, but we rarely had the things that we wanted, and I consider that a great gift because it created in me a hunger, a focused ambition, and a work ethic that\u2019s sort of a point of operation and pride for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Essentially, pining for things she couldn\u2019t afford meant she had things to work towards. And that\u2019s the message she wanted to leave with the next generation entering the workforce: don\u2019t lose your appetite for bigger ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite the successes you are sure to achieve, material or otherwise, never stop wanting,\u201d she said, while warning that the alternative is \u201cresignation to complacency and inertia.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No matter where you\u2019re starting from, Parker stressed that no dream is too big.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI wholeheartedly disagree with the definition of dreamer as one who lives in fantasy as impractical or unrealistic,\u201d she added. \u201cTo dream is to have vision.\u201d<\/p>\n As the poet Norman Vincent Peale famously said: \u201cShoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you\u2019ll lang among the stars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And Parker is a clear example of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n She began working at eight years old, playing the lead in an NBC TV after-school special,\u00a0The Little Match Girl<\/em>,\u00a0for $500\u2014and later spent years taking roles she didn\u2019t love to pay the bills. But the 61-year-old said the experience didn\u2019t kill her Hollywood dreams.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had many of those detours in my own life that you might be able to name: bad movies, bad television shows, that I did to pay the rent or to eat, but I challenged myself not to let those less-than-inspiring deviations erode my greater goals,\u201d she said to the class of 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n Parker\u2019s not just preaching to students. The actress and her husband, Matthew Broderick, have previously insisted they\u2019re raising their three children to \u201cunderstand what it means to earn money,\u201d including dressing her son in hand-me-downs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTheir needs are met\u2026 They\u2019re warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but they should pine for things,\u201d the \u201cSex and the City\u201d star told <\/em>iHeartRadio<\/em> in 2023. \u201cAnd they should also, I think, be interested in how do they contribute to the things at a certain point.\u201d<\/p>\n Parker\u2019s not the first to tell students that overcoming adversity is the ultimate rite of passage for successful people. Delta\u2019s CEO, Ed Bastian, told this year\u2019s graduates that enduring hardships in life is an \u201cinvestment\u201d in their careers and future selves.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Stanford graduates that not having enough of it could even hold them back.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople with very high expectations have very low resilience\u2014and unfortunately, resilience matters in success,\u201d Huang said during an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. \u201cOne of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n The tech genius\u2014who with a net worth of $180 billion is one of the world\u2019s wealthiest people\u2014was born in Taiwan in 1963 and spent the bulk of his early life in Thailand, before moving to the U.S. at 9 years old.<\/p>\n And just one example of Huang\u2019s hardship was his daily high school experience: The teenager had to cross a dangerous footbridge with missing planks over a river to get to his public school in Kentucky, where he was then relentlessly tormented. Bullies even tried to toss him off the bridge, but he reframes his tough experiences growing up as \u201copportunities for setbacks and suffering\u201d\u2014setting him up for the CEO job today.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering,\u201d Huang added. \u201cGreatness comes from character and character isn\u2019t formed out of smart people\u2014it\u2019s formed out of people who suffered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSarah Jessica Parker says she took on \u2018bad movies\u2019 to pay the bills, but it didn\u2019t kill her Hollywood dreams<\/h2>\n
CEOs agree that \u2018ample doses of pain and suffering\u2019 create success<\/h2>\n