Harry Potter star Emma Watson has opened up about one 'soul-destroying' element of acting she doesn't miss since taking a breather from the big screen.
Watson, who is now 35 years old, grew up on set after having been just 10 years old when she was cast as the iconic Hermione Granger in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.
She went on to appear in titles like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Beauty and the Beast, but it's now been six years since her last movie, Little Women, in which she played Meg March in 2019.
Since then Watson has been taking a break from big roles, though she's kept an eye on the world of cinema by traveling to the Cannes Film Festival in May.
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In a new interview with Hollywood Authentic, the British actor opened up about how she's been spending her time - including a lot of pickleball - and the things she doesn't miss about acting.
Watson explained that she's currently working on 'something that [she's] never done before', and described herself as being 'maybe the happiest and healthiest [she's] ever been'.
She went on to note that being an actor comes with 'having the weight of a public persona, that sort of needs constant feeding and sprucing and glamorizing'.
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"It’s very energy-intensive stuff. 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," Watson explained.
It's not only the 'public persona' that Watson is glad to be free of, however, as she also admitted that she doesn't miss promoting and 'selling' her work.
She said: "In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual. But a bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art. The balance of that can get quite thrown off. I think I’ll be honest and straight-forward, and say: I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying."
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However, there are parts of the job that Watson does miss, as she continued: "I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art. I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed. The moment you get on a film set, you don’t get very long for rehearsal.
"But the moment you get to talk through a scene - or I got to prepare and think about how I wanted to do something - and then the 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. 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."
Looking ahead, Watson said she's open to taking on work even behind the camera, but for now she's focusing on being present and in-the-moment.
Topics: Emma Watson, Harry Potter, Celebrity, JK Rowling
Emily Brown