Benicio Del Toro Delivers Powerful Speech To Students; 'Do Not Forget Where You Come From'

Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro told hundreds of students from the University of Puerto Rico his inspiring story of how being Hispanic and bilingual helped his career move forward, and also gave the graduates advice on how to handle failure and success.

"Failure and success are two sides of the same coin. Without failure, there's no success," he told the audience. "No one taught me how to fail; there were so many failures that I learned not to be afraid to fail very quickly. Without failure there is no success, and when those moments of failure come, don't give up and don't lose your courage," he insisted. "Learn from those failures and overcome them so you can start over with the same love you did before."

The Academy Award winning actor also spoke of the first role that allowed him to speak Spanish, which was "Traffic" (the same one that won him an Oscar). "That was the first film in which I spoke Spanish, and I quickly realized that being bilingual and knowing two cultures is in no way a disadvantage," del Toro recalled.

And despite the fact that he previously starred in hit films such as "The Usual Suspects" and "Snatched," the actor recalled being pressured to change his name "if he wanted to make it" and be able to compete with other famous Hollywood stars. "Changing my name would be forgetting who I am and leaving my pride aside; not just my personal pride, but the pride for my country and my identity," he said. "If you forget where you come from, you lose the essence of who you are."

"You need to own your dreams; own your ideals, and with a little bit of patience your lives will interpret themselves," del Toro told the cheering students at the Rafael A. Mangual coliseum, in Mayaguez.