Natalie Portman Harvard Commencement Speech | Harvard Commencement 2015

Hello Class of

2015

. I am so honored to be here today, Dean Karana, parents of faculty and, most especially, graduate students. Thank you very much for inviting me to the senior class committee. It's truly one of the most exciting things I've ever been asked to do. I admit mainly because I can't deny it since it was leaked in the Wikileaks post about the Sony hack that when they invited me I responded and I directly quote my own email. Wow, this is so nice. I'm going to need a fun ghost. Riders, any thoughts, this initial response, now thankfully public, was prompted by the knowledge that on the day of my class we were lucky enough to have Will Frell as the class day speaker and that many of us hungover or even freshly prepared wanted laugh, so I have to admit it. that today, even 12 years after graduating, I am still unsure of my own worth.

I have to remind myself today that you are here for a reason. Today I feel much the same as when I arrived at Harvard Yard as a freshman in 1999, when you were To my continued shock and horror, still in kindergarten, I felt that there had been some mistake, that I wasn't smart enough to being in this company and that every time she opened her mouth she would have to prove that she wasn't just a dumb actress. So I start with an apology. This won't be much fun. I'm not a comedian and I didn't have a ghostwriter, but I'm here to tell you that Harvard will give you all the diplomas tomorrow.

Sometimes you are here for a reason. Your insecurities and inexperience may lead you too to embrace the standards or values ​​of other people's expectations, but you can take advantage of that inexperience to forge your own path, one that is free of the burden of knowing what things are supposed to be like. things, a path defined by His own particular set of reasons The other day I went to an amusement park with my soon to be four year old son Tobe and watched him play Arcade games. He was incredibly focused throwing his ball at the Jewish Target mom, which I am.

I skipped 20 steps and I already imagined him as a Major League player with his aim and his arm and his concentration but then I realized that when he won he was playing to exchange his tickets for the crappy plastic toys the prize was much more exciting than the game to achieve it, of course I wanted to urge him to enjoy and challenge the game, the improvement of practice, the satisfaction of doing something well and even feel the achievement of achieving the goals of the game, but all these aspects were shaded by the little 10 cent plastic men with stretchy, sticky blue arms that stick to the walls that was the prize in a child's nature we see many of our innate tendencies I saw myself in him and maybe you too the prizes serve as fakes idols everywhere Prestige Wealth Fame power you will be exposed to many of these, if not all of course, part of the reason I was invited to speak today, beyond being a proud alumnus, is that I have manned some toys coveted in my life, including a not-so-plastic, not-so-bad Oscar, so we stumbled upon a common trope.

I think about the opening

speech

about people who have achieved a lot, telling them that the fruits of achievements cannot always be trusted, but I believe that contradictions can be reconciled and In fact, this instructive achievement is wonderful when you know why you are doing it. doing and when you don't know it, it can be a terrible trap. I went to a public high school on Long Island, I said High School, oh, hi, saset, the girls I went to. The school had Prada bags and ironed hair and they spoke with accents. I, who would move there at age n from Connecticut, imitate to fit in Florida, oranges, chocolate cherries, since I was older and the Internet was just starting when I was in high school.

People didn't really pay much attention to the fact that I was an actress. I was mostly known at school for having a backpack bigger than me and always having white hands because I hated seeing anything crossed out in my notebooks. I was voted into my senior yearbook, most likely a contestant on Jeopardy or code for nerdiest when I arrived at Harvard right after the release of episode one of Star Wars. I knew I would be starting over in terms of how people saw me. I was afraid people would do it. I suppose I had gotten in just because I was famous and they would think I wasn't worthy of the intellectual rigor here and they wouldn't have been far from the truth when I got here.

I had never written a 10-page article before being here. I wasn't even sure I had written a five-page paper. I was alarmed and intimidated by the calm eyes of fellow students who came here from Dalton or Exitor and who thought that compared to high school, the workload here was easy. I felt completely overwhelmed and thought that reading a thousand pages a week was unimaginable that writing a 50 page thesis was something I could never do I had no ideas how to declare I had no idea how to declare my intentions I couldn't even articulate them to myself I He had been acting since he was 11 years old, but he thought acting was too frivolous and certainly pointless.

I came from a family of academics and was very concerned about being taken seriously, in contrast to my inability to declare myself on my first day of orientation, freshman year, five separate days. The students introduced themselves to me saying that I am going to be president. Remember I told you their names for the record were Bernie Sanders Mark Rubio Ted Cruz Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in all seriousness. I believed in each of them their bearing and self- Trust alone seemed proof of their prophecy that I could not get rid of my doubts. I only got in because I was famous.

That's how others saw me. That's how I was driven by these insecurities. I decided I was going to find something. to do at Harvard that was serious and meaningful that would change the world and make it a better place at the age of 18. I had already been acting for seven years and I assumed I would find a more serious and deeper path in college, so the first year. I decided to study neurobiology and advanced modern Hebrew literature because I was serious and intellectual and needless to say I should have failed both. I got bees FYI and to this day every Sunday I burn a small effigy to the pagan gods of the great inflation, but as I was working my way through Yahushua's living bet in Hebrew and the different neural response mechanisms .

I saw friends around me writing articles on sailing and pop culture magazines and teachers teaching classes on fairy tales and The Matrix. I realized that seriousness for seriousness' sake is Sake was its own kind of trophy and a dubious one at that. A pose I sought to counter some half-imagined argument about who I was. There was a reason he was an actor. I love what I do and I saw from my peers and mentors that that was it. Not only was it an acceptable reason, but it was the best reason when I got to the graduation session where you sit today after four years of trying to get excited about something else.

I admitted to myself that I couldn't wait to come back and make more movies. I wanted to tell stories to imagine the lives of others and help others do the same. I had found or perhaps claimed my reason. You have a prize now or at least you will have it tomorrow like a Harvard degree in your hand, but what is the reason behind it? My degree from Harvard represents to me the curiosity and invention that we encourage here. The friendships I have maintained. The way Professor Graham told me he wasn't describing the way light hits a flower, but the shadow the flower casts.

The way the teacher is scary. I talked about theater as a transformative religious force. How Professor Klin showed how much of our visual cortex is activated just by imagining. Now, these things don't necessarily help me answer the most common questions. They ask me what designer are you using. What is your physical condition? I haven't gotten makeup advice, but since then I've never been embarrassed to ask what I might have previously thought was a stupid question. My degree from Harvard and other awards are emblems of the experiences that led me to them. The wood paneled conference rooms.

The colorful leaves of autumn. Hot vanilla tokin reading great novels in overstuffed library chairs running through the dining halls screaming ooh ah City Pass City Pass City Pass City Pass wooo Now it's easy to romanticize my time here, but I also had some very difficult here, some combination of being 19 years old dealing with My first heartbreak taking birth control pills that have since been taken off the market for their depressive side effects and spending too much time without daylight during the winter months led to some pretty Dark times, especially during the second year, there were several times when I started crying in meetings. with teachers overwhelmed with what I was supposed to accomplish when I could barely get out of bed in the morning, times when I assumed the motto of my schoolwork, it wasn't okay if I could just finish my work, even if I had to eat a giant pack of Sour Patch Kids to help me read a single 10-page document.

I felt like I had accomplished a great feat that I would repeat to myself. I didn't do it well. A couple of years ago I went to Tokyo with my husband and had lunch. in the most extraordinary sushi restaurant I don't even eat fish. I'm vegan so that tells you how good it was even with just vegetables. This sushi was what you dream of. The restaurant had six seats. My husband and I marveled at how someone could make rice so superior to all other rice, we wondered why they didn't make a bigger restaurant and be the most popular place in town.

Our local friends explain to us that all the best restaurants in Tokyo are this small and they only make one type of dish Sushi or tempora or Teriyaki because they want to do that well and beautifully and it's not about quantity but about enjoying the perfection and beauty of the particular. I'm still learning now that it's all about the good and maybe I never have. and the work ethic and virtuosity we bring to the particular can impart a unique kind of enjoyment to those to whom we give and, of course, to ourselves in my professional life.

It also took me a while to find my own reasons for doing my job on the first film I made. was released again in 1994, frighteningly the year most of you were born. I was 13 when the movie came out and I can still quote what the New York Times said word for word about me. Miss Portman poses better than she acts. The film had a universally lukewarm tone. critical response and it failed commercially, that film was called The Professional or Layon in Europe and today, 20 years and 35 films later, it is still the film that people come closest to telling me how much they loved it and how much it moved them.

What is your favorite movie like? I feel lucky that my first experience with a movie release was initially a disaster by all standard criteria. I learned early that my meaning had to come from the experience of making the film and the ability to connect with individuals rather than major trophies of financial and critical success in my industry, and also that those initial reactions could be false predictors of the ultimate legacy. From his job. I started choosing only jobs that I was passionate about and from which I knew I could gain meaningful experiences. This completely confused all the agents around me. producers and audiences alike I made the Go ghosts of foreign independent cinema and studied art history by visiting the pra every day for four months while reading about Goya and the Spanish Inquisition.

I made the action movie V for Vendetta Studio for which I learned everything I could about freedom. Fighters who in other eyes could be called terrorists from a large akam to the Weather Underground. I made His Highness a stoner comedy with Danny McBride and laughed for 3 months straight. I was able to recognize my meaning and not let it be determined by box office receipts. or Prestige when I started making Black Swan, the experience was completely mine. I felt immune to the worst things someone could say or write about me. Whether the audience felt like going to see my film or not, it was instructive for me.

See that ballet dancers for ballet dancers once your technique reaches a certain level, the only thing that separates you from others is your quirks or even flaws. One dancer was famous for losing her balance a little. You can never be the best technically, someone always will be. you have a higher jump or a more beautiful line, the only thing you can be better at is developing yourself, creating your own experience, that's what Black Swan was about. I worked with Darren Aronowski, the director of the film, to change my last line. in the movie it was perfect because my character, Nina, is only artistically successful when she finds perfection and pleasure for herself, not when she tries to be perfect in the eyes of others, so when BlackSwan was financially successful and I started receiving praise, I felt honoured. and grateful to have connected with people, but the true core of my meaning had already been established and needed to be independent of people's reactions to me, people told me that Black Swan was an artistic risk, a terrifying challenge to trying to get Port to portray a professional. ballet dancer, but I didn't feel courage or boldness that attracted me.

She was so oblivious to my own limits that she did things that she was unfortunately not prepared for and that is why the same inexperience that in college had made me feel insecure and made me feel insecure. Wanting to play by other people's rules was now making me take risks. I didn't even realize they were risks when Darren asked me if he could do ballet. I told him I was basically a dancer, which, by the way, I believed wholeheartedly when it quickly became clear while preparing for the movie that I was maybe 15 years away from becoming a dancer, which made me work a million times harder. and, of course, movie magic and body doubles helped the final effect, but the point is that if I had known my own limitations I would never have taken the risk and the risk led me to one of my greatest artistic and personal experiences. and that not only did I feel completely free, I also met my husband during filming.

In the same way, I just directed my first film, a story of love and darkness, and I was quite blind to the challenges ahead of me. The film is a period film completely in Hebrew. in which I also act with an 8-year-old boy as a co-star. These are all challenges that should have terrified me because I was completely unprepared for them, but my complete ignorance of my own limitations seemed confident and landed me in the director's chair. Once there, I had to figure it all out and my belief that I could handle these things, contrary to all evidence of my ability to do so, was half the battle.

The other half was very hard work, the experience was the most profound and meaningful of my career. Now clearly, I am not urging you to perform heart surgery without the knowledge to do so. It is true that making movies has less drastic consequences than most professions and allows There are many effects that compensate for errors. What I'm saying is take advantage of the fact that you don't doubt yourself too much right now. As we get older, we become more realistic and that includes our own. abilities or lack thereof and that realism does us no favors people always talk about immersing themselves in things they fear that has never worked for me if I am afraid I run away and would probably urge my son to do the same fear protects us In many In all senses, what has helped me is to immerse myself in my own oblivion and be more confident than I should be, something that everyone tends to discredit in American children and in those of us who have been inflated by grades and ego.

Well, it can be a good thing if it makes you try things you may have never tried before Your inexperience is an advantage and will allow you to think in original and unconventional ways Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your advantage I know a famous violinist who told me that he can't compose because he knows too many pieces, so when he starts thinking about a note, an existing piece immediately comes to mind. Just starting out, one of your greatest strengths is not knowing how things are supposed to be. You can compose freely because your mind is cluttered with too many. pieces and you don't take for granted the way things are the only way you know how to do things is your own way here everyone will achieve great things there is no doubt about that every time you set out to do something new your inexperience can lead you astray a path where you will conform to someone else's values ​​or you can forge your own path even if you don't realize that's what you're doing if your reasons are your own your path even if it's a strange and clumsy path will be totally yours and you will control the rewards of What You Do by making your inner life satisfying at the risk of sounding like a Miss America contestant.

The most satisfying things I have experienced have truly been human interactions spending time. with women in community banks in Mexico with the microfinance organization FAA meeting with young women who were the first and only in their communities to attend secondary school in rural Kenya with The Children, a group that builds sustainable schools in countries in development, walking with guerrilla conservationists in Rwanda is a cliché because it's true that helping others ends up helping you more than anyone else. Getting out of your own head and worrying about someone else's life for a while reminds you that you're not the center of the universe and that in our forms we are generous. or we can't change the course of someone's life, even at work, the small feats of kindness that crew members, directors, fellow actors have shown me have had the most lasting impact and of course, first and foremost , the center of my world is the love that I share with my family and friends I wish for you that your friends are with you through all of this since my friends from Harvard have been together since we graduated my friends from school are still very close to us We've taken care of each other through heartaches and danced at each other's weddings.

We hugged each other at funerals and rocked each other's new babies, we worked together on running projects, we helped each other get jobs and threw parties for when we left the bad ones and now our children are creating a second generation of friendship as they Watch them walk together, emaciated and disheveled working parents that we are, grab the good people around you, don't let them go, the greatest asset that school offers you is a group of peers who will be both your family and your school for good. life. I remember. Always being mad about spring here in Cambridge tricking us into remembering a sunny playground full of laughing Frisbee throwers after eight months of being in the dark, freezing library, it was like the school had managed to turn on the nice weather as a last memory. that we should preserve.

In mind, that would make us want to return, but as I grow further from my years here, I know that the power of this school is much deeper than controlling the weather, he changed the very questions he was asking, quoting one of my favorite thinkers, Abraham. Joshua Hesel To be or not to be is not the question the vital question is how to be and how not to be thank you I can't wait to see you do all the beautiful things you will do