From bullying to social media anxiety, stars open up at Global Education forum
This year’s Global Education and Skills Forum has delivered an array of celebrities.
Among those attending the two-day event at Atlantis The Palm are stars from film, television, literature, social media and politics.
British impersonator and comedian Rory Bremner is hosting the event – held yesterday and today – in a TV-style chat show format.
Among the guests are Taron Egerton, 28, from the film series Kingsman. Although he plays a James Bond-style action hero, he revealed yesterday that he was bullied.
“It was awful,” he said. “I was really terrified. I didn’t want to go to school.”
But he was helped by a teacher who was “like a superhero”.
Egerton spoke at a panel discussion also joined by fellow British actor Nicholas Hoult, who became famous at the age of 11 in the film About a Boy.
He has since starred in Mad
Max: Fury Road and as Beast in the X-Men franchise. Recalling his childhood break into showbusiness, Hoult, 28, said he split his life “into two different worlds”.
“I imagined it as my alter-ego and my real life,” he said. “So school was the real world and then I’d go off and be like a superhero or something, and shoot a movie and then I would go back to school.
“It was weird because you would have a very adult side of life where you would turn up to work and then you would go back to school and run around the playground.”
Actors also revealed how they deal with issues created by social media, not just for themselves but for their children.
Gina Torres, from the American TV legal drama Suits – the cast of which included royal bride-to-be Meghan Markle – said she did not use it at all.
“I made a choice not to participate in any social media whatsoever,” Torres said. “We are in such an age of celebrity and people are so hungry for more information, and the more they get the more they want. When I was becoming an actor it was essential that we maintained a kind of mystique about ourselves, so when you saw us on stage or on screen inhabiting a character, you didn’t have the baggage of who we were.
“That sounds to have gone by the wayside. I am protecting my character and protecting myself, my world, my family.”
Sarah Rafferty, another star from the series, said she worried about the effects of social media and technology on her two young daughters.
“They are growing up behind-screen,” Rafferty said. “I guess my biggest concern with social media and having girls is the effects that it has on their self-esteem and the different types of problems that come with it.
“I am concerned about the connectivity of that generation, of building empathy, of the bullying, anonymous, that can occur.”
Four-time and reigning Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton also recalled his school days, revealing that he missed so much time starting his racing career that he was always in trouble.
“I was always behind at school and trying to catch up,” Hamilton said, adding that the school was “not very supportive. I was in detention constantly”. His parents hired a tutor to give him extra lessons, “which I hated”, he said. But he appreciated it now, and the efforts of his favourite teacher.
Hamilton also spoke of his concerns about the pressures on young drivers, many of whom drop out of school.
“Ninety-five per cent of them don’t make it,” he said. “And then they have no qualifications and no opportunities afterwards.”
It was one of his goals, he said, to help prevent this for future drivers.
Also attending the forum are actress and social activist Charlize Theron; Olympic champion Sir Mo Farah; Bollywood star and former Miss World, Priyanka Chopra; and the Merrell twins, whose YouTube channel has four million followers.
The political speakers include former US vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore; former British prime minister and Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair; and Julia Gillard, former Australian prime minister.
I guess my biggest concern with social media and having girls is the effects that it has on their self-esteem SARAH RAFFERTY Actress, ‘Suits’