ICYMI: #VMAs Roundup, Justin Bieber Tears, & an EPIC Nicki Minaj + Taylor Swift Make-Up

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Did you SEE the VMAs last Sunday?!?! Celebs were tweeting, 'gramming, singing, campaigning to move in to the White House, and we loved EVERY SECOND OF IT. Taylor Swift welcomed Nicki Minaj to the stage and Justin Biber cried all the tears during his comeback performance, but it doesn't even end there.

EMMA WATSON, VICTORIA BECKHAM, ZOELLA TOP INSPIRATIONAL WOMEN POLL

Emma Watson, Victoria Beckham and Zoella have been voted among the most inspirational women of the past decade.

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Grazia Magazine polled 1250 readers to find the most influential women in six different categories – Fashion, Culture, Entertainment, Politics and Technology. Each shortlist was suggested by Grazia staff.

In fashion, pop star turned designer Victoria Beckham triumphed ahead of fellow style icons Stella McCartney, Kate Moss, Mary Portas and Royal Wedding dress designer Sarah Burton.

Grazia editor-in-chief Jane Bruton commented: “Ten years ago, we knew Victoria as a Spice Girl and one half of an A-list power couple.

“She made no secret of her love for fashion, but was known for wearing, not creating it. The thought of Victoria as a credible fashion designer seemed outlandish but boy did we underestimate her!

“Through sheer hard graft and business clout, VB has become a great fashion designer.”

Brushing the likes of Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé aside, the brilliant Emma Watson topped the entertainment shortlist thanks to her continued high-profile movie roles and gender equality campaigning with HeForShe.

In the Technology shortlist, self-made millionaire and vlogger Zoe Sugg – aka Zoella – came out on top just months after she published her record breaking debit novel Girl Online.

Over in the culture category, American author, director and screenwriter Lena Dunhamreceived the most votes ahead of stiff competition from Oprah Winfrey, Hilary Mantel, JK Rowling and Katherine Bigelow.

Over in the sphere of politics, 17-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai deservedly came in first place four months after becoming the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fearlessly campaigning for girls’ rights since the age of 11, Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban in October 2012 and was flown to the UK for surgery. Since recovering she returned to school in Birmingham and resumed her activism.

Completing the influential list in the athletics shortlist is Olympic gold metallist Jessica Ennis-Hill who stormed to victory in Grazia’s poll ahead of Clare Balding.

The most influential women of the decade, according to Grazia readers, are as follows:

Fashion: Victoria Beckham
Culture: Lena Dunham
Entertainment: Emma Watson
Politics: Malala Yousafzai
Sport: Jessica Ennis Hill
Technology: Zoe Sugg (Zoella)

Victoria Beckham and Emma Watson among most inspirational women of decade

Victoria Beckham, Emma Watson, Lena Dunham, Malala Yousafzai, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Zoe Sugg have been named the most inspirational women of the decade by Grazia.

The magazine has celebrated its tenth birthday by conducting a poll to discover who readers consider to be the most influential women of the past ten years.

© Twitter / Victoria Beckham

Victoria Beckham

© MIGUEL ROJO/AFP/Getty Images

Emma Watson

Beckham has been named the most influential woman in fashion, triumphing over Kate Moss, Stella McCartney, Mary Portas and Sarah Burton. The former Spice Girl launched her first label in 2006 and has gone on to create a number of collections, as well as launching shows at various fashion weeks.

Grazia's editor-in-chief Jane Bruton said: "Ten years ago, we knew Victoria as a Spice Girl and one half of an A-list power couple. She made no secret of her love for fashion, but was known for wearing, not creating it. 

"The thought of Victoria as a credible fashion designer seemed outlandish but boy did we underestimate her! Last year she won British Entrepreneur of the Year at the British Fashion Awards and opened her first store in London. 

© Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

Lena Dunham

© Getty Images

Malala Yousafzai

"Through sheer hard graft and business clout, VB has become a great fashion designer."

Actress Emma Watson won the entertainment category, beating Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé. The Harry Potter star won for her various high-profile film roles as well as her role as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, through which she launched the #HeForShe campaign for gender equality.

Girls star Lena Dunham was voted most influential in culture, taking the crown over JK Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Kathryn Bigelow and Oprah Winfrey. Dunham rose to fame with her directorial debut Tiny Furniture, after which she created HBO series Girls. She has also published a collection of essays, Not That Kind Of Girl.

© PA Images / John Giles/PA Wire

Jessica Ennis-Hill

Zoe 'Zoella' Sugg

The politics category was won by Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who has been campaigning for girls' rights to education since she was 11. She was shot in the head on her schoolbus at the age of 15 in an assassination attempt and continued campaigning after her recovery. Last year she became the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.

Jessica Ennis-Hill CBE was named the most influential woman in sport, beating Clare Balding to the title. The athlete rose to prominence when she broke records and won gold in the heptathlon during the 2012 London Olympics.

Zoe Sugg, also known as Zoella, won the technology category. The vlogger rose to fame through her YouTube channel and last year published her debut novel, Girl Online, which achieved the highest first-week sales since records began.

UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson

British actor Emma Watson was appointed UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in July 2014. The accomplished actor, humanitarian and recent graduate of Brown University will dedicate her efforts towards the empowerment of young women and will serve as an advocate for UN Women’s HeForShe campaign in promoting gender equality.

At just 24 years of age, Emma has already been involved in the promotion of girls’ education for several years and previously visited Bangladesh and Zambia as part of her humanitarian efforts. She has worked to promote fair trade and organic clothing and served as an ambassador for Camfed International, a movement to educate girls in rural Africa.

“Being asked to serve as UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador is truly humbling,” said Emma. “The chance to make a real difference is not an opportunity that everyone is given and is one I have no intention of taking lightly. Women’s rights are something so inextricably linked with who I am, so deeply personal and rooted in my life that I can’t imagine an opportunity more exciting. I still have so much to learn, but as I progress I hope to bring more of my individual knowledge, experience and awareness to this role.”

About Emma Watson

Emma is best known for her role as the iconic character of Hermione Granger in the globally successful “Harry Potter” films. Her performance in the first film of the series, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” won her a Young Artist Award for Best Leading Young Actor.

Since the completion of the eight-film series, Emma has shown her versatility as a performer with her first screen roles, including the 2011 Golden Globe–nominated “My Week with Marilyn” and the 2012 award-winning coming-of-age film “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” for which Emma picked up the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Dramatic Movie Actor and Best Supporting Actor Award at the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards for her role.

Emma was most recently seen in “The Bling Ring,” the apocalypse comedy “This is the End,” and the epic biblical tale, “Noah.” Her upcoming projects include “Regression” opposite Ethan Hawke and the film adaptation of “The Queen of the Tearling.”

In 2012 Emma was honoured with the Calvin Klein Emerging Star Award at the ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards, and in 2013 she was awarded both the Trailblazer Award at the MTV Movie Awards and the GQ Woman of the Year Award.

- See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/partnerships/goodwill-ambassadors/emma-watson#sthash.u0xdbnF1.dpuf

‘Harry Potter’ stars say final scene was a challenge for the ages

g. 05, 2011 | 2:44 p.m.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2" (Warner Bros Pictures)

No other scene in the eight “Harry Potter” films created more angst for filmmakers than the epilogue of the final movie, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2,” a movie that last week crossed the $1 billion mark in worldwide box office.

There were no chained dragons, hairy hippogriffs or crackling magic energies in the sequence — it’s a few minutes of quiet dialogue between parents and their children in a train station — but the anxiety of it all was so smothering that the franchise’s star, Daniel Radcliffe, at one point wanted to sit out the scene.

PHOTOS: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2"

“I think they should do it with older actors and just leave us out of the scene,” Radcliffe said two years ago during a quiet moment on the stone-floor movie set where he has spent half of his working life and half of his life working. “If that’s what’s going to look best that’s what we should so. It’s too important that the ending is done right.”
(Needless to say, this is an article you shouldn’t read if you haven’t seen the film and want to remain in the dark as you walk into theaters.)

The sticky issue for Radcliffe, director David Yates and the rest of the “Potter” team was the fact that the epilogue takes place 19 years after the story’s climax at the smoldering Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In it, Harry and his now-adult friends, Hermione and Ron, are sending off their own children to study at Hogwarts. The plan was to “age up” Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and other young stars of the Warner Bros. franchise so they could convincingly play their elder selves.

Arthur Bowen as Albus Severus Potter and Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter (Warner Bros)

On the set in 2009, Radcliffe, still shy of 20, was leery of the plan to wear rubber fixtures on his jaw and a false hairline to age to 37. “I worry it will be a distraction,” Radcliffe said. “I don’t want people staring at our faces and getting distracted from that moment.

“If they giggle,” he added, “we’re dead.” For Radcliffe, the answer was to find adult actors to play the older roles.

PHOTOS: A decade of Emma Watson

It would be difficult for any moment in any popcorn film to bear all the weight coming down on the “Deathly Hallows” epilogue.

For all the billions of dollars the movies and books have piled up, the filmmakers also had to account for the emotional connection of, say, a 20-year-old moviegoer who has literally grown up with this vivid tale of loyalty, courage and loss.

“Potter” producer David Heyman was thinking of that when he told Radcliffe that there was no way that three “strangers” could deliver the final lines of the three main characters right before the final fade to black.

“After all we have been through with these characters, the way that a generation has grown up with them, they need to be the ones on screen when it’s time to bring it to a close,” said Heyman, who was a key decision-maker back when Radcliffe and his costars were first cast in their roles back in 2000. “There’s an expectation — even if it is not articulated — that they need to be on the screen when it’s coming to an end.”

Helena Barlow as Rose Weasley, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Ryan Turner as Hugo Weasley (Warner Bros)

The scene was finally filmed last May at King’s Cross Station in London. A few weeks later, Radcliffe was happy to say that he believed the challenge had truly been met. The relief in his voice was clear even in the trans-Atlantic phone call from London.

“The thing we didn’t want was for it to be distracting and I think we figured it out,” Radcliffe said. “We did it with prosthetics, in the end, and I’m sure there will be little bits of visual effects for retouching on those moments when we do a close-up… when you have the prosthetic on for a long time, it’s hard to maintain it, that illusion, and with close-ups you need to fix it up. It’s also a challenge to make someone who is 19 or 20 — an age where their face is still changing — and make them a fully grown adult. I think they looked fantastic though and, if I do say so, particularly mine. Mine looked pretty dead on. That’s me in the future I think.”

PHOTOS: Hogwarts professors through the years

Not everyone agreed.

Some images of the made-up trio leaked to the Web and some fans thought Radcliffe’s visage had gone too far into Old Man Potter territory and he looked more like a 48-year-old Harry S Truman than a wizard still shy of middle age. Many thought that Watson didn’t look especially different as Hermione of the future, others couldn’t stop staring at Grint’s aged-up Ron and his considerable expanse of forehead.

“The images of me still haunt me,” Grint told MTV later. “It was like this monster Donald Trump kind of mixture. It was scary.”

This week, reached in Italy on vacation, Heyman moaned when asked about that day at King’s Cross.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2"

“Rupert looked like he was about 75 years old with the triple chin and the belly, he looked like he had really lived as a lush,” Heyman said. “We knew we needed to rework the makeup.  There was another problem, too, shooting at the train station proved quite challenging for some of the younger kids who played the children of Harry, Ron and Hermione. It was really noisy every few minutes a train from Liverpool would pull in on one of the other tracks. We only had our one track closed.”

Yates went back to footage afterward but no clever edit or CG tune-up was going to elevate it enough. So, in December, long after the movie had wrapped, Yates and the producers summoned their young stars back to Leavesden Studios for a second, salvaging effort.

PHOTOS: A decade of Dan Radcliffe

With New Year’s Eve approaching, time was running out. If the “Potter” team needed an ominous reminder of what could go wrong all they had to do was look at Disney’s big holiday-season release, “Tron: Legacy,” with its dead-faced, digital “de-aging” of Jeff Bridges. The “Potter” team decided to go with less tech and more of a classic makeup approach, but Rick Baker, the seven-time Oscar winner in the field, says that approach is hardly perfect.

“There’s nothing harder than the human face because we all spend so much time looking at them,” said Baker, who has admired the “Potter” franchise from a distance. “You can create creatures and aliens and all of those things but people judge human faces in a different way. Especially if it’s a human face they recognize because it’s already famous.”

“Post-graduate work,” was the director’s playful reference to bringing the Hogwarts alumni back to the soundstages. The epilogue was re-shot and director Yates, reflecting on it during a Los Angeles visit last month, said it was “the right thing to do at that point” despite the expense, inconvenience and murmurs of negativity in the press.

A scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2." (Warner Bros. Pictures)

The makeup team for “Deathly Hallows” was led by Nick Dudman and, to Heyman, the second shot on the “age-up” work was a home run.

“It made all the difference in the world,” Heyman said. “We got what we were looking for. There was a challenge in the performance for the young actors. I know Emma talked about her approach was to think of her young siblings — her father has remarried and she has a new family — and how being with them was her way to get into the head of a parent going off to school. It wasn’t easy for them.”

Photos: Rupert Grint as Ron

Heyman has said the hushed control of the Leavesden soundstages provided “the place to get the needed intimacy” but the timing also created the unexpected benefit of making the epilogue the “true” last scene made by the young stars. Film scenes are rarely shot in the same order they are shown on-screen but in this instance the farewell feeling brought an evocative gravity to the day.

“We should have thought to film it last in the first place,” Heyman said Wednesday. “It created a reality of sorts to the feelings in the scene and in the air. And I think now we’ve heard from the rest of the world that it worked. In the end, we used some shots from King’s Cross, too, to make a hybrid. There was a little bit of CG as well. The combination is subtle, which it needed to be.”

Photos: Past 'Potter' premieres

So just as the saga ends not with a bang but with a steam train’s whisper, the epilogue isn’t the most visually dynamic achievement in “Potter” history but it was one of the most hard-won. And for Heyman, looking on the faces of his young stars and seeing so much artificial age added, it was a surreal send-off to a decade of wonder.

“It was something very strange and affecting,” the producer said. “I was really pleased because I thought there was a real tenderness about the last scene, a feeling of closure and the cycles of life. There’s a new beginning and there’s an ending. There are different sorts of adventures for these actors and for all of us. But we made it to the train station together.”

50 Things You Probably Didn't Know about Emma Watson

Emma Watson is best known for playing the character of Hermione, the best friend of Harry Potter in the Harry Potter film franchise 

1. Her full name is Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson.
2. Emma is of British and Turkish descendant.
3. Despite being British, she was actually born in Paris, France on April 15, 1990.
   

   Source: Wikipedia
4. Her parents, both British lawyers, are Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson.
5. Her parents divorced when Watson was 5, and she moved back to Oxfordshire in England with her mother and brother.
6. Emma has a younger brother Alexander, half brother from her biological father that is named Toby, and half twin sisters also from her father that are called Nina and Lucy.
7. Watson attended the Stagecoach Theatre Arts school at Oxford. She studied singing, acting and dancing, and performed in school plays.
   

   Source: Stagecoach Theatre Arts school
8. Emma plays field hockey, tennis, rounders and netball. She also dances in several different styles, like break dancing and modern, and likes to take art classes.
9. Her favorite school subjects are art, history and English. Her least favorites are math and geography.
   

   Source: Pixaba
10. Watson had never acted professionally when her theater teachers suggested her to agents looking to cast an upcoming movie based on the first novel of the best-selling Harry Potter series.
11. She auditioned eight times for the role of Hermoine Granger which catapulted her to international fame.
    

    Source: Wikipedi
12. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wanted Watson for the role of Hermoine from her first screen test.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
13. She was 11 years old when the first movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released in November 2001. s. It grossed more than $974 million worldwide. On opening day in the United States, the film made a record-breaking $33.3 million.
    

    Source: Tumblr
14. She is best friends with Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint after practically growing up with them on the Harry Potter set. She calls them her 'brothers'.
15. At the age of 12, she had a crush on her Harry Potter co-star Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
16. She was falsely reported to have broken her wrist during the filming of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002).
17. For the next decade Watson stayed busy filming the Potter series.
18. Emma thinks of her character Hermione Granger as a potential role model for young girls and as a female action hero who "rocks."
    

    Source: Flickr
19. Emma has said she thinks the chances are slim that she will ever be involved in another project that is as successful as "Harry Potter."
20. Her favourite book from the Harry Potter saga is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
21. Emma had to wait until she was fifteen before she was allowed to have her ears pierced.
22. In 2004 Emma joined Pierce Brosnan, Kenneth Branagh, and Samantha Morton to serve as a jury to select the teenaged film-makers' "First Light Film Awards" ceremony held in London's Leicester Square.
23. Emma wore braces for four months in 2005, saying it's important because a smile is for life.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
24. In 2007, Forbes Magazine estimated her earnings for the year at $4 million. At the time she was 17 years old. She was also named the 'Highest Grossing Actress of the Decade' by the Guiness Book of World Records. Her film work in the past decade has grossed over 5.4 billion dollars worldwide.
25. In 2005. When she was 15, she was the youngest person to be featured on Teen Vogue Magazine.
26. Emma lent her voice to Princess Pea for the animated movie The Tale of Desperaux in 2008.
    She passed her driving test on her first attempt, January 28, 2008.
27. Despite spending her adolescence on film sets, she had five hours of tutoring each day. She graduated with high grades.
    

    Source: Flickr
28. She can speak some french.
29. She is 5'5 tall.
    

    Source: Wikicommons
30. Watson has tried hard to shed her child star image, one that's so closely tied to the Potter franchise. "I have lived in a complete bubble. They found me and picked me for the part. And now I'm desperately trying to find my way through it," she said in an interview with Vogue.
31. She consistently tops best dressed lists. "I love fashion. I think it's so important, because it's how you show yourself to the world," said Watson.
    Emma was chosen as the face of Burberry's Autumn/Winter 2009 collection, and again for the 2010 Spring/Summer collection.
32. 

    Source: Flickr
33. In 2010, she shocked fans by debuting a cute pixie haircut. The hairdo did make her look more grownup.
    

    Source: Tumblr
34. She graced the cover of Vogue in July 2011.
    

    Source: Tumblr
35. Emma enrolled at Brown University in 2009, an Ivy League US university where she studied Literature.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
36. When she was asked why she chose a US higher education institution and not a British one, she said its because the American system allows students to study many subjects at once.
37. One of her favorite actors is Johnny Depp.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
38. Watson starred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012).
    
    
39. Emma is a cat lover. She has two cats named Bubbles and Domino.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
40. She is a huge fan of Julia Roberts.
    

    Source: Flickr
41. Emma admires Natalie Portman and Renee Zellweger for their willingness to take on challenging roles in film, even if they are not typically beautiful characters.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
42. Her favorite color is light blue.
43. She proudly proclaims herself to be a feminist, as well as fairly competitive.
44. Emma was ranked #69 on Maxim magazine's Hot 100 of 2011 list.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
45. Her favorite movie is Notting Hill (1999). Her favorite television show is "Friends" (1994).
    
    
46. Her favorite singers are Alanis Morrisette and Justin Timberlake.
    

    Source: Wikipedia
47. Her nickname is Em.
48. Emma Waston's net worth is $60 million.
49. Her favourite author is Carlos Ruis Zafon and she loved "The Shadow of the Wind" and its prequel "The Game of the Angel".