What makes Megan run

For many, the smart money in this year's awards stakes is on Kathryn Bigelow's ambitious real-life thriller Zero Dark Thirty which details the decade long hunt for Osama Bin-Laden following the 9/11 attacks in the US.

At the centre of Bigelow's tale is an obsessed CIA operative played by Jessica Chastain. And to complete the key female trio in this project is its 26-year-old producer Megan Ellison (below), who fully financed the $45m production.

Megan isn't just any Hollywood producer. From the third of, to date, four wives to American software billionaire Larry Ellison, Megan has become one of the most important independent players in an industry which, at major studio level, has become increasingly terrified of risk-taking.

Long before she inherited $2 billion on her 25th birthday, Megan had already dived into filmmaking making her first significant mark with the remake of True Grit. Since then she has been behind other movies like The Master and Lawless as well as Zero Dark Thirty.

In her pipeline are new films by Wong kar-wai, Spike Jonze, David O Russell and Bennett Miller not to mention a return to the popular sci-franchise The Terminator.