我最近发现自己与一个人具有很多共同之处，他来自英国、幽默风趣、有诵读困难，他是异装表演者、喜剧演员、逃脱大师、独轮车手、超级马拉松选手、飞行员……但以上这些都不是我们的共同点。
艾迪·伊扎德（Eddie Izzard）是我最喜爱的演员之一。我和梅琳达曾在伦敦欣赏过一场他的喜剧表演，并得到机会在表演结束后和他在后台聊了一会。所以我很高兴发现了他的这本自传——《相信我》（Believe Me，中文名暂译）。通过这本书，我第一次了解到伊扎德和我有着如此多相同的长处和弱点。
艾迪小时候是个有点笨拙的书呆子，对讨好女孩子一窍不通。他字写得很差，数学却非常优秀。对于自己感兴趣的科目，他总是满怀热情。19岁那年，他离开大学追逐自己的职业梦想。他曾有一个慈爱的母亲，却过早地被癌症夺走了生命。
这些事中的任意一件都能在我身上找到对应。
你可能也会觉得自己与艾迪有很多相似之处。事实上，这也是本书想要表达的一个最核心的观点。我们是用同一块布料裁出来的。用他的话说：“我们完全不一样，但我们又都一模一样。”
如果你从没看过艾迪表演的单口喜剧节目，那实在是太遗憾了。同蒙提·派森（Monty Python，英国六人喜剧团体，译者注）一样，他经常取材于像莎士比亚或查理曼大帝这样的真实历史人物，然后加上令人捧腹的喜剧效果，其中大部分是即兴发挥。此外，与其他一些才华横溢的喜剧演员一样，如罗宾·威廉姆斯（Robin Williams）和汤姆·汉克斯（Tom Hanks），他同样擅长扮演严肃的戏剧角色（他最近和朱迪·丹奇[Dame Judi Dench]共同参演了《维多利亚与阿卜杜勒》[Victoria and Abdul]）。他甚至还半严肃半开玩笑地说要参加议会竞选。
尽管他拥有如此多的天赋，我还是不太确定是否该向从未观看过艾迪表演的人推荐这本书。有很多喜剧演员，例如大卫·赛德瑞斯（David Sedaris）和乔治·卡林（George Carlin），即使你从未看过他们的表演也能读懂他们的书。但艾迪这本书不一样。你必须要亲自领略他那超现实的、内涵丰富的、自嘲式的标志性幽默。否则，你就会像半路插进别人的谈话一样感到无所适从。
但如果你看过并且喜欢艾迪的表演，我保证你一定会喜欢这本书。你会发现，他的写作风格与舞台表演风格高度一致。你还会发现，这本书不仅能带给你开怀大笑的时刻，而且还有大量动人的情节，讲述了艾迪·伊扎德如何从一个只有些许表演天赋的小孩变成一名国际巨星。
本书以迄今为止对他影响最大的一件事作为开篇：1968年，母亲去世，当时他只有6岁。艾迪的父亲是一名会计，常常出差在外，无法照顾他和弟弟。于是父亲把兄弟俩送去了离威尔士海滨度假胜地不远的寄宿学校。在那里，“你会希望看到偶尔有几具尸体被冲上岸……但却没那么走运。”设想你是个6岁的孩子，刚刚失去了母亲，你开始有一些与性别认同有关的问题，这些问题让你百思不得其解，这时候你却被送到了寄宿学校，每天只能哭着入睡！
这些经历虽然艰难，但如果这些没有发生，艾迪也不会成为现在的巨星。“我非常确信自己开始表演生涯，做各种大而疯狂、野心勃勃的事情，是因为……出于一些幼稚而魔幻的想法，我以为做这些事可能会把她带回来。但她从未回来。可我还是不断在尝试，只是为了以防万一。”
他坦承自己并不是一个天才的事实。虽然没有与生俱来的天赋，但他具有一些可能更重要的特质：想要进入娱乐行业的强烈欲望，以及追求目标时近乎残酷的执着。
20世纪80年代里的大部分时间，他都以街头艺人的身份经常出现在伦敦的考文特花园（Covent Garden）。那是一段漫长的岁月，充满各种令人尴尬的回忆。日复一日，年复一年，他刻苦钻研，从一次次的失败中琢磨和总结经验。正是凭借这种传统的方法，他变得越来越出色。
我其实忍不住在想，艾迪的生活刚好可以作为斯坦福大学心理学家卡罗尔·德韦克（Carol Dweck）的一个研究案例。她曾在自己的著作《思维模式》（Mindset）中提出一个叫做“成长型思维模式”（growth mindset）的概念。她解释说，具有成长型思维模式的人相信你的能力来自于勤学苦练和坚忍不拔，而不是DNA和命运。
艾迪肯定具有这样的成长型思维模式，某些方面表现欠佳并未阻止他继续尝试。事实上，这反而会带来相反的效果，驱使着他持续努力，直到他不再畏惧。
尽管生性羞怯，他却能站在众多观众面前表演；尽管恐高，他却成功考取了飞行员执照；尽管缺乏运动天赋，他却在27天里跑完了27个马拉松；尽管学习外语并将他的英式幽默植入其他文化背景十分困难，他却开始用法语、德语、阿拉伯语、俄语和西班牙语进行表演——这就是成长型思维模式带来的改变。
或许成长型思维模式帮助他克服的最大困难，莫过于在1985年时带着妆、穿着一条裙子走出家门，尽管外界给予他的是奚落与憎恶。但这么做让他感到释放：“它通向了……一个新世界，在那里我可以开始用我自己的方式做出改变，凭自身努力为自己得到一点点自由表达的权利。”
成长型思维模式给人带来的行为改变总让我印象深刻。现在我理解了它在艾迪光辉的舞台生涯中处于多么核心的位置，这让我成为了他更加忠实的粉丝。
Eddie Izzard Is a Comic Genius
I’ve recently discovered that I have a lot in common with a funny, dyslexic, transgender actor, comedian, escape artist, unicyclist, ultra-marathoner, and pilot from Great Britain. Except all of the above.
Eddie Izzard is one of my favorite performers. Melinda and I had the pleasure of seeing one of his comedy shows live in London, and then we got to talk with him backstage after the show. So I was excited to pick up his autobiography, Believe Me. It was there that I learned for the first time that Izzard and I share a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses.
As a child, Eddie was nerdy, awkward, and incompetent at flirting with girls. He had terrible handwriting. He was good at math. He was highly motivated to learn everything he could about subjects that interested him. He left college at age 19 to pursue his professional dreams. He had a loving mom who died of cancer way too young.
I can relate to every one of these things.
You might find you share similarities with Eddie as well. In fact, that’s the overarching point of this book. We’re all cut from the same cloth. In his words, “We are all totally different, but we are all exactly the same.”
If you’ve never seen Eddie perform his stand-up routine, you’re missing out. Like Monty Python, he often draws from real historical figures, such as Shakespeare or Charlemagne, and comes up with hilarious riffs, many of them improvised. And like other super talented comedians like Robin Williams and Tom Hanks, he’s also great in serious dramatic roles. (He recently appeared in the movie Victoria and Abdul, with Dame Judi Dench.) He even talks semi-seriously about running for Parliament.
Despite all those gifts, I’m not sure I’d recommend this book for those who’ve never seen Eddie perform. There are some comedians, such as David Sedaris and George Carlin, whose books would make perfect sense even if you haven’t seen their act. That’s not the case here. You have to witness his brand of surreal, intellectual, self-deprecating humor. Otherwise, it will be like you’re walking into the middle of a conversation.
But if you have seen Eddie's stuff and you like it, I promise you’ll love this book. You’ll see that his written voice is very similar to his stage voice. You’ll also see that the book provides not just laugh-out-loud moments but also a lot of touching insights into how little Edward Izzard, a kid with only a hint of performing talent, became an international star.
The book begins with the event that had by far the biggest impact on his life—the death of his mom in 1968, when Eddie was just six years old. Eddie’s father, an accountant who traveled a lot for work, was not able to care for Eddie and his brother by himself. So the Izzard boys were sent off to a boarding school near a Welsh seaside resort “where you’d expect a few dead bodies to wash up occasionally … but no such luck.” Imagine you’re six years old, you’ve just lost your mom, you’re starting to have gender-identity issues that make no sense to you, and you’re packed away to a boarding school where you have to cry yourself to sleep!
As hard as these experiences were, there’s no way Eddie would be the star he is today if they hadn’t happened. “I do believe I started performing and doing all sorts of big, crazy, ambitious things because … on some childlike magical-thinking level, I thought doing those things might bring her back. But she never came back. I keep trying, though, just in case.”
He’s honest about the fact that he was the opposite of a natural. Instead of innate talent, he had something perhaps more important: a burning desire to be in show business and the propensity to be relentless in pursuit of his goals.
He spent most of the 1980s working as a street performer, often in London’s Covent Garden. It was a slog, with a lot of embarrassing moments. But he got much better the old-fashioned way: by working at it day in and day out and learning from his many failures.
In fact, I couldn’t help but think that Eddie’s life would be a perfect case study for the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who has written about the concept of the “growth mindset.” As Dweck explains in her book Mindset, the growth mindset is one in which you believe that your capabilities derive from practice and perseverance rather than DNA and destiny.
Eddie has the growth mindset in spades. Being lousy at something doesn’t stop him from doing it. In fact, it often has the opposite effect, driving him to work at it until he is no longer terrified of it.
Not only did he apply that to performing in front of huge audiences, despite his fundamental shyness. That growth mindset also drove him to become a pilot, despite his fear of heights. It drove him to run 27 marathons in 27 days, despite his lack of natural athleticism. And it drove him to start performing stand-up in French, German, Arabic, Russian, and Spanish, despite the difficulty of learning these languages and translating his British humor into other cultural contexts.
Maybe most difficult of all, that growth mindset allowed him to walk out the door of his home in 1985 in makeup and a dress, despite opening himself up to ridicule and hate. But doing so was liberating: “It led to … a world I could begin to change in my own personal way, carving out for myself a small slice of freedom of expression.”
I’m always impressed by the growth mindset when I see it in action. Now that I understand how much it’s at the core of Eddie’s brilliance on stage, I’ve become an even more devoted fan of his.
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