Emma Watson

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson

15 April 1990

An English actress and model. After moving to Oxford with her mother and brother, Watson attended the Dragon School in Oxford, remaining there until 2003. From the age of six, she wanted to become an actress, and trained at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts, a part-time theatre school where she studied singing, dancing, and acting. By the age of ten, she had performed in various Stagecoach productions and school plays, including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince, but she had never acted professionally before the Harry Potter series. Following the Dragon School, Watson moved on to Headington School. While on film sets, she and her peers were tutored for up to five hours a day. 

She rose to prominence portraying Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, appearing alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in all eight Potter films beginning in 2001. Over ten years' time, the franchise earned Watson worldwide fame, critical accolades, and more than £10 million. From 2011 to 2014 she split her time between working on film projects and continuing her education, studying at Brown University and Oxford University and graduating from Brown with a degree in English literature in May 2014.

She was honoured by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2014, winning for British Artist of the Year. That same year, Watson was appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which calls for men to advocate for "gender equality".

As actress

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
• Ballet Shoes (2007)
• The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)
• My Week with Marilyn (2011)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
• This Is the End (2013)
• The Bling Ring (2013)
• Noah (2014)
• The Vicar of Dibley (2015)
• Colonia (2015)
• Regression (2015)
• Beauty and the Beast (2017)
• The Circle (2017)

Quotations

* * *

It sounds like a cliche but I also learnt that you're not going to fall for the right person until you really love yourself and feel good about how you are.

* * *

I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself.

* * *

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

* * *

I find the whole concept of being 'sexy' embarrassing and confusing. If I do a photo-shoot, people desperately want to change me - dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there's the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that's not me.

* * *

It sounds so geeky, but I really do like studying and reading, and if I'm not working on 'Harry Potter,' then my greatest relaxation is to sit with a book.

* * *

I'm a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering, encompassing love - and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.

* * *

I don't want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.

* * *

All I can do is follow my instincts, because I'll never please everyone.

* * *

My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.

* * *

It's quite stressful knowing that every time you walk out the door, someone is going to be giving you a very good look up and down, judging everything you wear.

* * *

I'm not going to school just for the academics - I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning.

* * *

People don't really understand, but having people stare, and point, and take pictures, even if it is in a positive framework, is quite isolating; there's no two ways about it. You feel a little bit, you know, freakish.

* * *

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

* * *

But it's a journey and the sad thing is you only learn from experience, so as much as someone can tell you things, you have to go out there and make your own mistakes in order to learn.

* * *

I like books that aren't just lovely but that have memories in themselves. Just like playing a song, picking up a book again that has memories can take you back to another place or another time.

* * *

I want to be a Renaissance woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I want to just do everything.

* * *

I have felt for the last 10 years I have had this battle; I've been fighting so hard to have an education. It's been this uphill struggle. I was Warner Bros' pain in the butt. I was their scheduling conflict. I was the one who made life difficult.

* * *

I've always been fascinated by Elizabeth Taylor, and I had read that her first kiss happened on a film set, which actually made me a little sad. You need to have normal experiences of your own.

* * *

Acting never was about the money for me... Maybe in 10 years, I'll be able to appreciate the fact that I am financially stable and independent and I don't have to make bad choices. I can be very picky.

* * *

I don't have makeup on all the time, but when I want, I have fun with my friends choosing clothes and putting nail polish on.

* * *

I love fashion. I think it's so important, because it's how you show yourself to the world.

* * *

Yes, I will put it out there - I will work for anyone for free if they're prepared to make their clothing Fair Trade and organic. It's really hard to get people interested in it.

* * *

I try to avoid wearing black because sometimes it's the easy option. But I'm young, so it's nice to be able to play with color and not just wear black all the time. I can save that for when I'm older.

* * *

I wasn't one of those girls who always dreamed of being an actress. I went to a normal school and then these film auditioners turned up when I was nine. Then I just fell into this whirlwind.

* * *

I want to be normal. I really want anonymity.

* * *

I don't have perfect teeth, I'm not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn't want to change anything.

* * *

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

* * *

I could be 100 years old and in my rocker, but I'll still be very proud that I was part of the 'Harry Potter' films.

* * *

My friends are all really nice about my fame, they're just curious really, they ask lots of questions.

* * *

The difficulty for me is that I'm interested in so many different things. I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up doing four or five different things.

* * *

I think there's this idea that lipstick is something quite old or something you'd only wear at night.

* * *

It's amazing people get so detached from what they eat and what they wear. No one has any contact with how things are made that are put in their body and put in their mouths and I just find it alarming that no one questions it.

* * *

Let's be honest, I have enough money to never have to work again.

* * *

I've never understood having crushes on people who you don't know in real life.

* * *

I think the actresses who are really successful are the ones who are comfortable in their own skins and still look human.

* * *

As an actress I take roles I find interesting.

* * *

I'm a perfectionist, so my bossiness definitely comes out.

* * *

I guess what really forms you as a person is what you do within your family to receive love or attention. In my family, what you had to do to receive attention was to have good conversation at the dinner table or for me to do well at school, and those were really my focuses because that was what was valued the most.

* * *

I just loved performing. It just made me feel alive. It's scary, but that's part of it. I think it's important to have that extra adrenaline. It gives you that extra zing.

* * *

I dance a lot and I run and do yoga and play field hockey and tennis. I like to be active. I don't always have time for that stuff, but I do always feel better afterward.

* * *

I just try and surround myself, for the biggest proportion of time that I can, with people who make me feel normal, because constantly feeling abnormal is quite difficult.

* * *

I paint and I draw and I write and I do other things too, and recently some people at school were asking if I'd ever publish any of my work. But I almost feel like I would have to publish it under another name because there's a definition of me out there that feels kind of stuck in the moment when it was formed.

* * *

It's very hard to describe your own style. And I'm young, so I'm still experimenting. But I think it's quite British and very much about individuality.

* * *

Hermione is so close to who I am as a person that I've never really had to research a role. I'm literally rediscovering what it means to be an actress.

* * *

I think when I was younger I wasn't really sure if I wanted to act, so I played around with a few different ideas. I wasn't sure whether I might want to write or whether I might want to do something in fashion.

* * *

I went from being totally unknown and never acting professionally to being in a major movie and being very famous. It all happened so quickly, I didn't have any time to work things out. It's been pretty scary at times.

* * *

But sometimes I've felt a little constrained by that idea of who I'm meant to be.

* * *

I am literally obsessed with Lena Dunham. She's, like, my favorite person in the world. I follow her on Twitter; I read her every day.

* * *

I'm a very heady person; I'm in my head a lot.

* * *

I'm really interested in modern history, but to fulfill a History degree at Brown you have to do modern and pre-modern.

* * *

Some days, for some reason, I can't go anywhere, and I'm like, 'That was a mistake,' and other days no one will even notice me.

* * *

I had a job when I was 10. I started living on my own when I was 17 or 18. I've earned my own money; I've traveled the world. What would I rebel against?

* * *

I'm very crafty! One time I made a television set out of a cardboard box - Everybody thought it was a lark! This was the beginning of a love affair with the arts.

* * *

My grandma said - when I was really young and I'd sing along to the radio - why do you sing in an American accent? I guess it was because a lot of the music I was listening to had American vocalists.

* * *

I don't know, I'd love to try some theater. That's my other thing. I'd love to do some Shakespeare.

* * *