Ellen DeGeneres | jeracgallero

She is Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson, also known as Emma Watson. She is an English actress and model. She rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series; she was cast as Hermione at the age of nine, having previously acted only in school plays. She starred in all eight Harry Potter films, alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint. Watson‘s work on the Harry Potter series has earned her several awards and more than £10 million. She made her modelling debut for Burberry‘s autumn/winter campaign in 2009. In October 2013, she was voted Sexiest Female Movie Star in a worldwide poll conducted by Empire magazine. In May 2014, BuzzFeed dubbed her the “most flawless woman of the decade“.

In 2007, Watson announced her involvement in The Tale of Despereaux and the television adaptation of the novel Ballet Shoes, which was broadcast on 26 December 2007 to an audience of 5.2 million. The Tale of Despereaux, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo, was released in 2008 and grossed more than US$86 million in worldwide sales. In 2012, she starred in Stephen Chbosky‘s film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and in 2014, she played Ila in Darren Aronofsky‘s biblical epic Noah.

Watson was appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in 2014. She helped launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which calls for men to advocate for “gender equality“.

After leaving school, Watson took a gap year to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows beginning in February 2009, but said she “definitely want[ed] to go to university”. The Providence Journal reported that Watson had confirmed that she had chosen Brown University, located in Providence, Rhode Island. In March 2011, after 18 months at the university, Watson announced that she was deferring her course for “a semester or two.” Watson was a “visiting student” at Worcester College, Oxford, for the 2011–12 academic year. Watson told Ellen DeGeneres in March 2014 that she was “about to graduate” from Brown in May. She noted that it took five years to graduate instead of four because, due to her acting work, she “ended up taking two full semesters off”. On 25 May 2014, Watson graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and released a cap-and-gown photo on her Twitter account.

In 2013, Watson became certified to teach yoga and meditation. She told Elle Australia that an uncertain future meant finding “a way to always feel safe and at home within myself. Because I can never rely on a physical place.”

In January 2014, Watson began dating Oxford rugby player Matt Janney. Photographs published in September showed Watson moving items out of her London home with Janney‘s help.

Watson joined Judi Dench, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Leigh, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mark Ruffalo as recipients of the 2014 Britannia Awards, presented on 30 October in Los Angeles. Watson won for British Artist of the Year and dedicated her award to Millie, her pet hamster who died as Watson filmed Philosopher’s Stone.

Watson has promoted education for girls, visiting Bangladesh and Zambia to do so. In July 2014, she was appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador. In September that year, she delivered an address to a standing ovation at UN Headquarters in New York City, helping launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which calls for men to advocate for gender equality. In that speech she said she knew she was a feminist at age eight when she was called “bossy” (a trait she has attributed to her being a “perfectionist”) whilst boys were not, and at 14 when she was “sexualised by certain elements of the press”. Watson‘s speech also called feminism “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities” and declared that the perception of “man-hating” is something that “has to stop”. Also in September Watson made her first country visit as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador to Uruguay, where she gave a speech that highlighted the need for women’s political participation.