Emma Watson Is Private For A Surprising Reason

There are so many intriguing things about Emma Watson, and one of them is how she possibly manages to keep her life so private, despite the fact that she's had such a successful career. Even in the age of oversharing on social media, her personal life remains personal, and now, she's explaining exactly why that is. While talking to Jessica Chastain in her new Interview Magazine cover story, Watson revealed why she's so private, and it has a lot to do with maintaining her integrity as an actor.

In the interview, Watson addressed the way she likes to keep boundaries between her work life and her personal life, and her approach is so interesting. It's not just because she wants to have privacy, although that definitely seems to be part of it. According to The Beauty and The Beast star, she prefers to draw that line so that those who see her movies will be able to really see her as the character on screen, rather than bring their image of who Watson is into the theater with them. She's not private just because she wants to be; she's private because she feels it's an essential part of being good at her job.

She said,

"So the story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I've been so passionate about having a private identity. When I step into a character, people have to be able to suspend their disbelief; they have to be able to divorce me from that girl. And not having everyone know every single intimate detail of my entire life is part of me trying to protect my ability to do my job well."

That's not something I often think of when I consider how hard it must be to live life in the spotlight. Obviously, when you're an actor, you're put under a microscope, but Watson brings up such a good point how that extends to her career, as well. Aside from what she chooses to share, not much else about her makes it to the news, and it seems to be that way with a lot of the biggest names in Hollywood. This year's Best Actress winner at the Oscars, Emma Stone, has zero social media presence and personal details of her life rarely become public unless she makes them public, and so many of their peers live the same way.

And then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the Kardashians, who make a lot of their personal lives accessible. Because of that, like many of their fans, I feel like I know them in a way that I don't when it comes to celebrities like Watson. If Kim decided to take on a serious acting role, I'm not sure I'd be able to separate her persona from her character. Watson is onto something here.

And to her credit, her methods seem to be working. Watson spent a good chunk of her early career playing Hermione in the wildly popular Harry Potter series, and she easily could have been seen as only Hermione forever, but that's not what happened at all. Watching her as Belle in Beauty and The Beast when it hit theaters last month, all thoughts of Hermione were far from my mind. She seems to fully embody every character she takes on. She can definitely attribute that to her talent, but it probably also has something to do with how privately she lives.

Whatever Watson's magic is, it's working. As much as I wish she would share more about herself, I'm more than happy to settle for what she decides to dish out plus witnessing her come alive on screen. For real — no one else would have made a better Belle.