Emma Watson on Life after Hermione Granger
Emma Watson recently graduated from Brown University. This was another achievement by the young actress, who managed to make a career after the completion of the Harry Potter film series.
Watson, who grew up in Oxford, shot to fame at the age of nine after being chosen to play Hermione Granger, a Muggle-born Gryffindor student who would be best buds with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. She met the fans' expectations, her adolescent years uneventful if compared to most teenage stars who ended up in the news due to erratic behavior. She handled fame quite well.
"I lived in denial for as long as I possibly could. Until the age of 18, I would take the Oxford Tube, which is a public bus. Then it got to the point where the fact that I was on the bus would spread from one end to the other. I'd think, Why am I doing this to 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," she said.
After “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2” wrapped up, Watson appeared in critical films like “My Week with Marilyn”. Then she decided to live in the USA, which was a bold move.
"I've always loved America. When we came here with Harry Potter, everyone was so warm. Eventually, all of my friends were American, and I think that's why I was attracted to playing Americans, even extreme ones like Nicki. When I'm presented with a character, I think I have not had this experience. I don't really know what this would be like. I'll have the experience through the character," she said.
Her recent role was Ila in "Noah", her return to large-scale spectacle films.
"I remember being on set and Darren (Aronofsky) was saying, 'Okay, the water is going to be cold, we're probably going to be here for a full day, try and conserve your energy between takes, like keep warm and make sure you eat properly. This is going to be physically very demanding.' For a minute I felt very intimidated and then there's something about having done those 'Harry Potter' films and they were very physical. We did a lot of stuff in Scotland. It was freezing cold, filming at four in the morning, working crazy hours," she said.
"It's kind of comforting in a way to know that in some senses, nothing will be as hard as that again, and I'm pretty prepared for most things people can throw at me, whether it be animals, water, stunts, CGI (computer-generated imagery), whatever it is. It was a very good school in a way and set me up very well for this kind of environment and this kind of pressure."
Watson's next project is Alejandro Amenábar's "Regression", scheduled for release next year. Expect more.
