Emma Watson Keeps Her Dating Life Private

Emma Watson has come a long way since she was Hermione Granger (though the young witch always will be in our hearts). She's a UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador, an inspiration to young feminists everywhere, and personal friend of Gloria Steinem and bell hooks (she even screened Beauty and the Beast for Steinem and got her stamp of approval). A lover of literature, she's recently been seen hiding books on the New York subway and the London Underground for commuters to happen upon — she's literally spreading the word. But Watson is human, after all, and she has her life apart from her activism and film career. She's a downright catch — so is Emma Watson dating anyone? Yes, but any more than that is none of our business.

In her cover story interview with Vanity Fair, Watson emphasized just how sacred her privacy is to her. She won't take selfies with fans, for example, because she doesn't want a geotag snapshot of where exactly she is (which makes sense, as the magazine reveals she's had several stalkers over the years). She told Vanity Fair she does have a boyfriend, but she refuses to discuss him with the press because "You can't have it both ways." As she explained, "I want to be consistent: I can’t talk about my boyfriend in an interview and then expect people not to take paparazzi pictures of me walking around outside my home."

Besides wanting to protect her private life from the very prying public, Watson also does not want to subject her significant other to the intrusiveness of her superstardom. "I’ve noticed, in Hollywood, who you’re dating gets tied up into your film promotion and becomes part of the performance and the circus," she said. "I would hate anyone that I were with to feel like they were in any way part of a show or an act." She's not wrong, at all. Will we ever forget the saga of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson on the Twilight trail?

Though Watson would not comment further on who exactly her beau was, the Vanity Fair story point to the boyfriend being rumored to be William "Mack" Knight, a man who works in tech and is decidedly very out of the spotlight. But who knows? That's just rumor and Watson's rep declined to comment to People when they reported on Knight in February of 2016. Plus, in the past, she was rumored to be dating Prince Harry, which turned out to, of course, be ridiculously untrue. Playing princess Belle seems to be the closest Watson has gotten royalty, so the speculation about her current boyfriend seems for naught. And it should probably stay that way.