Emma Watson says she took an acting hiatus after realizing: "I didn't have a voice"

“I think I felt a bit caged,” she recalls. “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.”

She continues: “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… 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.’”

During her hiatus, Watson has focused on philanthropic work and personal business pursuits—right now, she’s fresh off launching a premium gin with her younger brother, Alex. Fraught relationship with the industry aside, Watson asserts that she will “absolutely” return to acting when it feels right; in the meantime, she’s just “happy to sit and wait for the next right thing.”

“I love what I do,” Watson explains. “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. Does that make sense?” With the phrase “robot mode” feeling more and more applicable to creatives every day, Watson’s logic is pretty airtight.