Actress Angelina Jolie, like other powerful stars in Hollywood, has begun directing her own movies. Surprisingly, her next project is about a Christian athlete, with a script penned by the notorious Coen brothers (Fargo, Raising Arizona and True Grit).

The movie, Unbroken, is based on writer Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of Louis Zamperini, the Depression-era Olympic track athlete turned World War II hero turned follower of Jesus Christ via a Billy Graham crusade turned internationally renowned inspirational speaker. Talk about a cinema-worthy story arc.

Born the son of Italian immigrants in 1917, Zamperini was a smoker by age 5, a school bully by third grade and a menace to society by high school. Thankfully, Zamperini was encouraged to put his talents toward more productive pursuits, such as running track. Successful in the sport and eventually known as “the tornado from Torrance,” Zamperini was invited to train for the 1936 Olympics and eventually enrolled at the University of Southern California on a scholarship.

At the 1936 Olympics in Nazi-ridden Berlin, Zamperini’s most notorious fan was Adolf Hitler. After his disappointing placement in the 1936 games, Zamperini hoped to requalify for the Olympic team in 1940, but the games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.

A bombardier in WWII, Zamperini’s aircraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He and one other survivor spent 47 days at sea in a life raft, drifting some 2,000 miles, only to be picked up by a Japanese war ship. The Japanese put Zamperini and his companion into their horrific prison camps, where he was tortured beyond depiction for two years. He was made a special object of cruelty by the infamous Japanese torturer known as “The Bird.”

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When something substantive emanates from Hollywood, it’s worth taking note of. While so much of the celebrity world, and the pop-culture media, is egocentric, self-aggrandizing, and self-absorbed, infrequently does someone from that environment offer something visionary, insightful, inspiring, and non-hypocritical. Yet Ashton Kutcher did just that as he proffered some wisdom and hope to a youthful crowd this week.

Last Sunday evening at the Teen Choice Awards, Kutcher was presented the Ultimate Choice Award. His take on the significance of the award may have been implied by his joke about it, as he referred to it as the “old guy award.”

He then said that he wanted to share three things that he thought were important for his young audience. And frankly, in retrospect, they’re three important concepts for people of any age.

His first point was, “I believe that opportunity looks a lot like work.” He described the various jobs that he’d had before he succeeded in acting, including helping his dad carry shingles for roofing jobs, a dishwasher at a restaurant, working in a deli at a grocery store, and sweeping the floors of a factory. He continued, “I never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. Every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job and I never quit my job before I had my next job.”

There are so many of all ages today who believe that certain jobs are beneath their dignity; so they choose to not work at all, refuse to accept responsibility for their own lives, and subsist in a state of dependency. But especially with those of Generation Y, there seems to be the pervasive expectation of entitlement. They feel entitled to all the comforts their parents worked for years to acquire, but they want it now and are convinced they’re entitled. Those of Generation Y, especially, must come to realize the self-worth and satisfaction that comes from hard work, and what it does to build character as well as provide for needs and wants, and that there is no job that is “beneath” them, and no perks to which they are entitled.

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