Robert De Niro, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor, delivered a memorably blunt commencement address at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in May 2015. He opened with what became one of the most quoted graduation speech lines of the decade: 'Tisch graduates, you made it! And you're f---ed.' After cataloguing all the other NYU schools whose graduates would easily find jobs — nursing, dentistry, business, law — De Niro acknowledged that Tisch graduates had chosen a path where employment was anything but guaranteed. But he argued that this wasn't really a choice at all. Artists don't choose their path the way accountants do, using 'reason and logic and common sense.' Artists discover a talent, recognize a passion, and surrender to it. The distinction between 'following dreams' and 'reaching for your destiny' was crucial — dreams are optional, but destiny is something you can't escape.