Wallflower

The Harry Potter star, Emma Watson, had been tipped for the lead role in Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic fairytale, but has reportedly changed her mind, according to Variety.

Variety writer Marc Graser announced the news on his Twitter feed, writing: "Emma Watson has decided not to star in Disney's Cinderella"

It is thought that Emma - who is up for best female performance at the MTV Movie Awards for Perks Of Being A Wallflower - could have chosen instead to star in Beauty And The Beast, which she was also linked to. The new version would be directed by Guillermo del Toro, and written by Trance screenwriter Joe Ahearne.

Arrogant

There was not much to be said about the original Lara Croft. "She barely had a voice, let alone a character," admits Rhianna Pratchett, lead writer on the latest instalment. She was not even originally British. The character – a gender-flipped evolution of developers Core Design's original hero Rick Dangerous, himself little more than a carbon-copy of treasure-hunter Indiana Jones – was first conceived as Lara Cruz, before a trawl through a phonebook threw up the purposely bland British surname Croft.

From there, a legend was spun: Croft became the orphaned daughter of architect and all-round swashbuckler Lord Richard Croft. She acquired a stately manor house, a boarding-school education and the received pronunciation of the aristocracy. Yet those who played the first game could be forgiven for forgetting all of that. A back-story appeared in the manual, but on screen we saw little more than a pistol-toting babe in skimpy clothes, with a waist about the same width as one of her thighs and an implausible pair of breasts.

Over the sequels that followed, although she rarely ditched the hot-pants and crop-top, she developed more of a personality. Gamers came to recognise her as fearless, even arrogant, thrill-seeking and callous, bold and brave: in short, a badass. This characterisation helped counterbalance the brazen sexuality of the character design, even making it possible to argue she was some kind of feminist icon. So it was a risky move on the part of the prequel's developers Crystal Dynamics to strip a character who has often been derided as sexist of the skills and attitude that once served as an emphatic riposte to the allegation.

Teflon

The return of Lara Croft in her first video game in three years will see a “more human” character than the one depicted by Angelina Jolie on the big screen, its lead writer has said.

Rhianna Pratchett penned the story of the new Tomb Raider – described as a “reboot” by developers – which sees Croft fresh out of university and fighting for survival after being shipwrecked on a mysterious island.

Ms Pratchett, the daughter of world famous fantasy author Terry Pratchett, said she wanted to focus on the origins of the iconic adventurer, rather than the “Teflon Lara” portrayed in previous games and by Jolie in the film adaptations.

“With this story we had carte blanche to go back and reboot as we saw fit”, she said. “Lara’s a very strong woman, she’s very confident, she’s very brave, she’s very resourceful. But we wanted to go back to a time when those traits were below the surface.

 

Esther

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Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther.

Transformer

Sandberg is the Harvard-educated chief operating officer of Facebook and a self-avowed feminist who wants to transform the role of women in the workplace. She is also incredibly wealthy — reportedly worth hundreds of millions — and is too often tone-deaf to her voice of privilege. This makes it hard to close the distance between lucky her and the women who could most benefit from her advocacy. It’s a problem that plays out time and again in “Lean In.”