Natalie Portman, the Academy Award-winning actress, returned to Harvard — where she had graduated in 2003 with a degree in psychology — to deliver the commencement address in 2015. She opened with disarming vulnerability, confessing that even twelve years after graduation, she was 'still insecure about my own worthiness.' The speech's central insight came from her experience directing her first film, 'A Tale of Love and Darkness.' She had been 'woefully unprepared' for the job, but discovered that her very inexperience became an asset — it forced her to take risks she never would have taken if she'd known the 'rules' of filmmaking. Her 'complete ignorance as to my own limitations looked like confidence' and got her into the director's chair. Once there, she had to figure everything out from scratch, which led to original choices no veteran director would have made.