Whenever you’re making a movie, especially when you’re writing, you always have self-doubts. I did the first location shooting in Tunisia.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Question
What is the biggest obstacle you have faced professionally?
Craft & work
Oh, absolutely. I think most overachievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure. Unless failure gets very close and very nearby that fear doesn’t reach profound levels, but it drives us. It drives me to work very hard.
Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, San Francisco, California, 1 May 1997 source ↗
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George Lucas
Filmmaker; creator of Star Wars and founder of Lucasfilm
Recorded
Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Skywalker Ranch, California, 1 June 1999
source ↗
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder and chief executive of Bumble
Don't be scared of the ‘what ifs,’ because the truth is, the only failure is not trying. That's the only way you can fail. Trying and having it not work out isn't failure.
Howard Schultz
Chief executive of Starbucks, 1987–2000, 2008–2017 and 2022–2023
But in 2007, the music stopped. We had lost sight of our shared purpose and our guiding principles, in which growth and success began to cover up mistakes and a disease set into Starbucks. That disease, hubris. We lost our way and believe it or not, we almost lost the entire company.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Radio astronomer; discoverer of pulsars
My contemporaries were more upset about the Nobel than I was not to be recognised. One of them labelled it the 'No-Bell' prize! But it was fine by me. There's no Nobel Prize in astronomy and I was really proud that it was my stars that had convinced the prize committee that there was good physics in astrophysics.
Recorded
Louise Walsh, University of Cambridge 'Journeys of Discovery' interview series, 1 January 2020
source ↗
More from Larry Ellison
View profile →There were lots of times, especially in the early days, that were very, very difficult. I think the most difficult experience I had was in 1990 when Oracle had its only loss quarter in history. We’d been in business for 20 years, and after 20 years we lost money one quarter. We had a very difficult time. We had virtually doubled our sales every year for ten years. Nine out of ten years, ten out of eleven years. It was really quite an amazing run. We were the fastest growing company in history
Recorded
Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, San Francisco, California, 1 May 1997
source ↗
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