Emma Watson hasn’t been in a movie since 2019’s Little Women, but she’s also “maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been.” The Harry Potter actor shared that warm update with Hollywood Authentic in a conversation that delved into her complicated relationship with the craft that put her name in lights before she was even a teenager. “I think what’s interesting about being an actor is, there’s a tendency to sort of fracture yourself into multiple personalities. I’m not just talking about the roles you play, but having the weight of a public persona, that sort of needs constant feeding and sprucing and glamorising. It’s very energy-intensive stuff,” she explained. “And shedding the multiple identities has freed up so much space, I think, for me to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then artist. And someone who’s trying to do some critical thinking of her own.”
Another thing Watson has been glad to leave behind is the hard work of promoting a film. “I do not miss selling things,” she said. “I found that to be quite soul-destroying.” That doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss the craft itself, however; she just found that “the balance of that can get quite thrown off.” “I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art,” she continued. “I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed.”
For Watson, acting was an escape. “[T]he minute the camera rolls, and getting to just completely forget about everything else in the world other than that one moment—it’s such an intense form of meditation,” she shared. “Because you just cannot be anywhere else. It’s so freeing. I miss that profoundly. But I don’t miss the pressure. I forgot it was a lot of pressure. I did a small thing for a play, just with my friends. I was like, ‘Bloody hell, this is stressful!’ And that wasn’t even for a real public audience or anything. I don’t miss that.”
Despite her career pivot, Watson is still “working really hard” on other things. She’s studying for a DPhil in creative writing at Oxford, runs a sustainable gin brand called Renais with her brother, and advocates for women’s rights, environmental justice, and more. She also has something cooking “that I’ve never done before,” but she didn’t want to share what that was “because then people are like, ‘Well, when is it happening? What’s going on with this thing?'” Whatever it is, we’ll learn it on her timeline. “Oddly, somehow, the less I try to do, the more I get done,” she said. “I don’t know how I would shape the distinction between effort and trying. Or maybe what I would say is: I’m caring, and I’m present.” That’s what really matters.
