It marked the first time in the Supreme Court's history a Chief Justice welcomed a newly-called lawyer to the Bermuda Bar with the counterintuitive theatrical encouragement to "break a leg" rather than wishing her good luck.

But Chief Justice Richard Ground's use of the theatrical idiom was entirely apt given the professional background of Olga Rankin. The Greek-born former actress, at age 65, became the oldest freshly-minted lawyer on the Island at a call to the Bar ceremony on Friday.

Mrs. Rankin, who is married to iconic Bermudian television producer and animator Arthur Rankin Jr., had a long career in European and American films and TV series in the 1970s and '80s – perhaps most famously playing Prince's abused mother in the 1984 blockbuster 'Purple Rain'.

But when she was in her 50s she decided to resume an academic career that had been abruptly cut short by the Greek military coup in 1967. This life-upending event prompted Mrs. Rankin to decline a full, four-year scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley and flee to France where she instead embarked on a professional acting career.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies and a Masters in humanities and social thought from New York University before embarking on legal studies at the University of Kent Law School in the UK. Graduating with a first-class Bachelor of Laws degree in 2007, she completed a legal practice course at the College of Law before returning to Bermuda last year.

Hamilton law firm Cox Hallett Wilkinson recruited Mrs. Rankin and she has spent the last year there completing her professional development and training before formally being admitted to the Bermuda Bar.

"I left Greece shortly after the rule of law was suspended by a military dictatorship in 1967 and replaced by martial law," she told family, friends and professional colleagues who attended the Supreme Court ceremony. "I moved to France. And within months of arriving there I witnessed the rule of law briefly replaced by mob rule during the student and worker uprisings of 1968. Then in the 1970s I worked in Italy at a time when the anarchic activities of both right- and left-wing extremists threatened to entirely obliterate the rule of law in that country.

"The memories of those different times and places remain vivid in my mind. I have seen the consequences of opening the cage door and releasing lawlessness into a community. I have seen the carnage that can result. I have seen the harm it can do to those who rightly view justice and equality before the law as the two indispensable prerequisites of any healthy, civil society."

Mrs. Rankin said since she moved to Bermuda 30 years ago, she had been blessed to live in a society where the rule of law is not only considered paramount but represents the keystone in the arch of the Island's democracy.

She invoked Bermudian lawyers and constitutionalists including the late Dame Lois Browne Evans and Arnold Francis, QC, as members of the Bermuda Bar whose examples she would like to emulate jurists who recognised the law was a dynamic force for social good rather than a dusty set of past precedents.

She concluded by citing some lines from 'Ithacha', Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy's celebration of 'The Odyssey'. She said the verse reflected her sentiments about her own long, indirect journey to the legal profession a career she's embarking on when most of her contemporaries are reaching retirement age and all she has learned along the way: "Have Ithaca always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey. Better it last for years, so that when you reach the island you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaca to give you wealth. Ithaca gave you a splendid journey."