Youth Incorporated Magazine

Emma Watson

Emma Watson seems to share more than a few traits with her bright character Hermione Granger in the tremendously successful Harry Potter franchise. The child star was tutored with her fellow actors on the sets of Harry Potter for five hours each day after filming. Despite the intensive focus on filmmaking, she managed to get straight As in all her ten GCSE subjects and in her A levels in English literature, geography and art. Did she have a time machine too?
After her gap year where she filmed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Watson announced that she had enrolled for her BA at Brown University. Watson refused to drop out of school saying, “People can’t understand why I don’t want to … but school life keeps me in touch with my friends. It keeps me in touch with reality.”
Where other child stars drop out due to media hype and attention on campus, Watson kept her focus for two years before taking a break to participate in advertising for the last Harry Potter film. She will soon resume her final year at Brown after an exchange programme to Worcester College, Oxford.

Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman has always been hardworking, but to get a degree in Psychology from Harvard University while still acting? Wow. The gorgeous star even skipped out on the premiere of one of her earliest and most successful films, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, so she could study for her high school exams! While most of us are skiving off from our studies to watch movies, she has an entirely different philosophy.
Portman was still acting while completing her assignments for her course, juggling the pressures of advertisements, film shoots and public attention. But college was always her first priority. She clearly valued brains over beauty; she told the New York Post, “I don’t care if [college] ruins my career. I’d rather be smart than a movie star.” We’re certainly impressed! Perhaps it has something to do with her parents and upbringing as well… She said recently, “My parents are the opposite of stage parents in that they’re still not so sure about the whole Hollywood thing. My dad is still saying, ‘This being an actress thing is cute but don’t you think it’s time to go to grad school?’” Well, we  certainly hope you find time to do both!

Tyra Banks
The gorgeous former model who is already heading a successful multimillion dollar media empire has gone back to school as well! And not just any paper institution – Banks has enrolled in the prestigious Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management Program since last year. She told CBS News, “In order for my company to grow and be the best, to reach women and to serve them, I needed the best. So I went to the best!”
But surely, going to the ‘best’ has to be difficult for the entrepreneur who was sidetracked from her studies at the age of 17 by an international modeling career. During the book signing of Modelland, she told her large audience in New York about the demanding nature of her assignments: “I think they make it hard on purpose. Once you get done reading on assignment, you get another.” But the gains are also many. She recounts to NY Mag that she shocked her accountant by knowing what an EBITDA was – Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization! And she is probably one of the few people in the entertainment industry who knows what that is!

James Franco
We were already in love with actor James Franco, but the news that the 33-year-old actor is returning to school for a second PhD in Literature and Creative Writing just blew us away. The gorgeous star of 127 Hours will be attending the University of Houston beginning in the fall of 2012 next year, one of only twenty out of 400 applicants. Not only that, the educational overachiever is currently completing his first PhD in English at Yale University. He is also a Professor at New York University, teaching a class on how to transfer poetry to film.
Franco initially dropped out of UCLA to pursue his acting career, but reenrolled in 2006 for an English major focused on creative writing. While continuing to act, he took twice as many courses and completed his four-year degree in just two years with a GPA of over 3.5! He hasn’t stopped going to college ever since and has maintained a rigorous academic regimen for himself. He simultaneously took up the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Columbia University while also studying filmmaking at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, creative writing at Brooklyn College and poetry at Warren Wilson College. Franco told the Washington Post that he enjoys going to school for the experience and his love of the subject: “I go to school because I love being around people who are interested in what I’m interested in and I’m having a great experience… I’m studying things that I love so it’s not like it’s a chore.” Gorgeous and smart, what more can you ask for?

Volume 1 Issue 6