Emma Watson Shared The “Soul-Destroying” Part Of Being An Actor

Seven years away from acting has been good for Emma Watson. The Harry Potter vet, now 35, is “maybe the happiest and healthiest” she’s ever been, she shared in an interview with Hollywood Authentic magazine, published on Sept. 21. Addressing her break, she admitted she does miss acting “profoundly” — but not certain other parts of the job.

Emma’s Hiatus

Watson gained international fame at just 10, when she was cast as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. Her career flourished outside of the blockbuster franchise as well, with movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), The Bling Ring (2013), and Beauty and the Beast (2017). Most recently, she starred in Greta Gerwig’s high-profile Little Women remake, which was filmed in late 2018.

However, the work wasn’t without its challenges. “I think what’s interesting about being an actor is, there’s a tendency to sort of fracture yourself into multiple personalities,” she told Hollywood Authentic. “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.”

Watson went on to explain that the promotion of a project is “a bigger component than the actual job itself” and she doesn’t miss that aspect or the pressure that comes with being an actor.

“I found that to be quite soul-destroying,” Watson said of the promotion element. “But 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.”

Her comments expand on what she shared with the Financial Times in a 2023 interview. At the time, she shared that she wasn’t “very happy” when she put a pause on acting and she didn’t enjoy selling work she’d had a limited hand in creating.

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

Rebuilding

In her hiatus, Watson told Hollywood Authentic she’s had more space “to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then artist.” She’d previously reached a point where she felt she didn’t have a good foundation for her life.

“I think I worked so hard for so long that my life sort of bottomed out,” she said. “The bottom fell out of the piece, which was actually me and my life. So I needed to go and do some construction work.”

The past several years have been a time of personal and professional growth for her. Watson has been writing and directing, and she eventually wants to work both behind and in front of the camera, she told British Vogue in January 2024.

“I don’t see myself as having stepped away from acting,” she said. “I just see myself as wanting to expand what I do and being able to be in things that I have written or directed or produced. To really be at the start of a project takes time. Films can be decades in the making. Finding it and writing it and putting it together.”