Actress Emma Watson shot to international stardom when she took on the role of brilliant young witch Hermione Granger in the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” — but she only just revealed why, after earning critical acclaim for later roles, she essentially vanished from Hollywood.
Watson, who was just ten years old when she first donned her Hogwarts robes for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” hasn’t appeared on screen since “Little Women” — which wrapped in 2018 and was released in 2019. She explained the reason she had stepped away from acting during an interview with the Financial Times that was published Friday: she just wasn’t enjoying it.
“I wasn’t very happy, if I’m being honest. I think I felt a bit caged,” Watson said. “The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over. To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’”
“It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process. I was held accountable in a way that I began to find really frustrating, because I didn’t have a voice, I didn’t have a say,” Watson continued. “And I started to realize that I only wanted to stand in front of things where if someone was going to give me flak about it, I could say, in a way that didn’t make me hate myself, ‘Yes, I screwed up, it was my decision, I should have done better.’”
That’s not to say that Watson is finished with acting, she said, noting that if the right project were to come along, she would certainly jump at the chance to go back to movies: “Yes, absolutely. But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing. I love what I do. It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don’t want to switch into robot mode any more.”
She has already tried her hand at directing, working behind the scenes late last year to write and direct an ad campaign for Prada.
“People always told me I should direct and produce, even when I was on Potter. I was worried it was just technical, not creative, and I couldn’t bring what I think is probably my skill set,” Watson explained, adding that the tipping point had been “friends asking for favors – ‘I need to do a photo shoot’ or ‘I’m making a video.’”
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“That made me realize I actually know quite a lot about that,” she said. “Being a director seemed unattainable. I don’t think I had any confidence in that. I know it seems weird. I mean, I grew up on a film set.”