Emma Watson is opening up about life after stepping away from Hollywood, and it’s refreshingly honest. The 35-year-old star, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, shared her thoughts in a new interview with People magazine.
Watson reflects on her acting career, which kicked off when she was just 11. “In some ways, I really won the lottery with acting,” she says, calling her early experiences “so unusual.” But while she misses the creative side of the job, she’s glad to ditch one big part: all the promotion and selling of movies.
“The bigger component than the actual job is the promotion and selling of that piece of work,” Watson explains. “I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying.” She landed her breakout role as the clever Hermione in the first Harry Potter movie back in 2001. She reprised the character through all eight films in the franchise, wrapping up at age 21 with the 2011 finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
After Harry Potter wrapped, Watson kept busy with major roles. She charmed audiences as Belle in Disney’s 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast. Her last big screen appearance came in 2019’s Little Women, where she played the eldest March sister, Meg.
These days, Watson cherishes the artistry of acting but not the exhaustion that comes with it. “I do very much miss using my skill set, and I very much miss the art,” she says. “I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed.” Actors, she notes, often have to “fracture yourself into multiple personalities”—not just becoming the on-screen character, but also managing a polished public image that demands constant “feeding and sprucing and glamorizing.”
Letting go of those layers has been liberating. “Shedding the multiple identities has freed up so much space for me to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then artist,” Watson shares. “And someone who’s trying to do some critical thinking of her own.”
Watson’s bonds from her Harry Potter days remain strong. In 2022, her co-star Tom Felton released his memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard. Watson wrote the foreword, where she gushed about their deep friendship. She calls Felton her “soulmate” in a pure, platonic sense, describing him as the person who truly sees her: “You know that person in your life who makes you feel seen? That person who is somehow a witness to all that unfolds? … For me, that person is Tom Felton.”
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