There is a little girl who comes from nowhere, dreams of landing the role in the film of her favourite book and it actually happens. Effortlessly, she ascends the ladder of fame and fortune. She has a fairy-dust-coated magical childhood filled with red carpets and movie stardom. There are no photos of her stumbling out of nightclubs drunk, no poisonous ex-boyfriends selling their stories; there is nothing lurid or shady or dark. She grows up. Her life changes forever. She discovers she can’t ride the bus any more but she can design her own collection of clothes, secure lucrative modelling contracts and have Capital Fun. She turns out to be beautiful, wealthy, powerful and in control. Despite her colossal fame, she remains grounded and beloved by all. She has, obviously, the perfect life. So why is Emma Watson crying into her scrambled eggs? “This book,” she says, shaking her head with disgust, “is total fiction.”

We are seated on a velvet brown banquette at a corner table in a grand hotel in New York. Breakfast sits untouched as she stares at her fact on the cover of ‘Emma Watson: the Biography’. She is dressed in a baggy jumper with her hair pulled back; her younger-looking expressive face currently registers anguish.

Previous interviews with Watson have portrayed her as a self-possessed, mature young woman who acknowledges her luck and gratitude in abundance. Perhaps, as she will later say, if I’d met her on a different morning, that side of her would have been present.…

Emma Watson is ready to break the spell.

Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame, is in a new movie, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower.’

Yes, to date she remains best known as Hermione, the resolutely loyal sorceress and driven student from the blockbuster ‘Harry Potter’ series.

But brace yourself for a whole new Watson. That’s her, loose and giddy, clad in a corset, shaking her rump during a performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the coming-of-age dramedy ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’, out Sept. 21. And yes, that’s her, speaking in a precise American accent as Sam, something of a sweetly lost soul trying to find her footing as a high school senior while befriending a depressed, possibly suicidal freshman (Logan Lerman). Next year, in Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Bling Ring’, she pole-dances and does drugs, and she faces the apocalypse (as herself) at James Franco’s house in Seth Rogen’s comedy ‘The End of the World’.

It’s all part of Watson’s mission to challenge herself by being as anti-Hermione as possible in her post-Potter endeavors. ‘Perks’ was Watson’s first major project after wrapping ‘Harry Potter’, and she chose it precisely because Sam was so different from anyone she’d ever imagined playing. “It was way out of my comfort zone, doing the crazy dancing and the Rocky Horror stuff. This movie has helped me shake off a lot of the fear and restrictions I put on myself,” she says. “I’m slowly breaking down the barriers. Slowly, I’m giving myself permission to be an actress and not worrying so much what people think about it.”

Because Watson, 22, grew up on the Potter sets and never went to a high school, she didn’t have much to draw on from personal experience.…

Emma Watson is one of the top names being bandied about in Hollywood to portray Anastasia Steele in a big-screen adaptation of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, and the former Harry Potter star reveals a shocking secret about her connection to the sultry bestseller.

“I haven’t read the book — so I don’t know what I would be signing myself up for,” she admitted at the premiere of her new coming-of-age film ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. “So I would have to get sent a script, I guess. But it’s always flattering that people are thinking about you for roles and you are in the mix for things, so it’s great.”

In addition to Watson, Amanda Seyfried, Emma Stone, Emmy Rossum and Lucy Hale are just a few of the names among the many actresses rumored to be in the running for the erotic tale, for which many have pegged either Ryan Gosling or Man of Steel star Henry Cavill as the hottest man favored to portray Christian Grey.

Watson was just at the Toronto International Film festival to promote her project, and she talked about what it was like hanging out with A-listers Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart, forming a girl-power trio to be reckoned with.

“It was really nice,” reported Watson. “I mean, there is always all these rumors that actresses have so much rivalry and, you know, that we don’t get on or anything. We all sat around eating food, we were all starving, and just having a drink and just talking about how crazy it all is, which was just nice really.”

Of her new film, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’, in theaters September 21, Watson said, “I think there is so much high school coming-of-age stuff, but this one really feels authentic and it really feels real and it really feels like it speaks to what the experience is actually about.…

“I went through a point where I didn’t know if I was a good actress or even wanted to be an actress,” Emma Watson told Yahoo! Movies at the Trump International Hotel in Toronto while promoting her latest movie, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. It’s true that while a student at Brown University there seemed to be a moment where the hyper-intelligent ‘Harry Potter’ superstar was unsure about the future of her acting career post-Hermione. Could she navigate that difficult transition from child superstar to adult actress that stars like Lindsay Lohan have found so challenging — and did she even want to?

Few career transitions are trickier than the stage that Watson navigates now, having dropped out of Brown over a year ago: morphing from naive child star to sexually aware lead actress. In ‘Perks,’ based on Steve Chbosky’s hugely popular coming-of-age in the suburbs novel, Watson’s Sam is the princess of a circle of misfits. The stylish high school senior with a reputation for putting out (and a history of sexual abuse) has a gay best friend, Patrick (Ezra Miller) and together they invite shy-guy freshman Charlie (Logan Lerman) to join their circle of misfits. Sam could never be confused with Hermione: she’s no shrinking violet. In one holiday scene, A braless Watson raises eyebrows in a revealing tight red sleeveless sweater. Hermione would have worn a bulky cardigan!

To some extent, the film’s coming of age narrative parallels Watson’s current experience as she matures and distances herself from her Hogwarts past toward a Hollywood career.…

Emma Watson is living out another fantasy — the life of a high school kid that she missed out on growing up in the Harry Potter fold.

For her first major film role since leaving the world of Potter behind, Watson chose ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ in which she plays an American teen who’s part of a clique of hip outsiders at a Pittsburgh school.

The 22-year-old British actress said it gave her a taste of a whole different life considering her cloistered upbringing on the set of the Potter franchise, in which she was cast as bookish young hero Hermione Granger at age 9.

“It felt pretty exotic to me. It really did. It was a very voyeuristic experience,” Watson said in an interview Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where ‘Perks’ played ahead of its U.S. theatrical release Sept. 21. “Getting to go to Friday night football and Olive Garden, school dances and all of that stuff. That was really another world to me.”

She’s rich and world-famous because of the eight ‘Harry Potter’ films, and Watson shares Hermione’s studiousness, spending a couple of years at Brown University years before launching into a busy post-”Potter” film schedule.

Yet for all the worldliness that comes with her Hollywood experience, Watson said that growing up in a bubble of celebrity has left her feeling like a kid when it comes to many things.

“There are some parts of me that feel very old, and then there are other parts of me that are, like, I have a sense of my own arrested development,” Watson said.…

‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ centers on 15-year-old Charlie (Logan Lerman), an endearing and naive outsider, coping with first love (Emma Watson), the suicide of his best friend, and his own mental illness while struggling to find a group of people with whom he belongs. Co-starring the likes of Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh and Mae Whitman. Stephen Chbosky writes and directs the adaptation of his own highly acclaimed young adult novel of the same name. ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ is released in cinemas September 14th in the US and October 3rd in the UK. Look out for a more in-depth interview with Emma Watson for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ next week.

What was your reaction when you finished reading ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘ script for the first time?
I was actually crying when I finished the script (laughs), so that was my first reaction. I read the whole thing in one sitting, in one go. I just didn’t move for like two hours. I read the whole thing from page to page. I just loved it, I was like, “Wow, where did this come from?” I called my agent and just said how much I loved it and then I went back to Brown University and ended up speaking to a bunch of my friends and mentioned the name of the script that I read. And it turned out that three or four or my friends were huge fans of the book.…

Emma Watson is tired, but you’d never know it. The British actress, elegant in Jason Wu, is immaculately polite and brightly eloquent. It’s her first time at Toronto’s movie festival, but she’s seen neither the city, nor any films.

“I’m flying out tonight. It’s been a crazy whirlwind,” says Watson, late Sunday afternoon. “I haven’t left the hotel. I left the hotel to go to the premiere and then came back here to do more press. It’s crazy but it’s all good.”

The actress plays a high school student in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. In real life, Watson is about to finish her college degree; she’s attending Brown University.

“I have a semester left. I’m awfully close. The plan is that I graduate by the summer,” she says.

Her American accent in Perks is nearly flawless. So too is her performance, as a the anti-Hermione, a vibrant, confused, somewhat lost and always loving senior who befriends a depressed freshman.

“I was super-anxious about doing this movie because I have no person American high school experience from which I could draw. I felt at a real disadvantage. Logan and Ezra knew what prom was all about, and homecoming. I worked with a voice coach. I asked a lot of questions,” says Watson. “I wish someone had given me this book at age 13 or 14, before I went into dating. It has some real gems of wisdom in there. I really wanted to be part of this movie and this book and message.”

Does she ever feel like she missed out on anything by spending her teen years shooting the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise?…

When Emma Watson turned 18, Karl Lagerfeld sent her a Chanel fly-fishing rod as a birthday present. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she laughs. “It’s actually my dad who’s the fly-fisher in the family, but it was so sweet that Karl had obviously done some research, seen that I’d once donated to The Wild Trout Trust or something similar and thought that this would be something that I would love. I’ve never used it but it’s such a beautiful object – one of the best things I’ve ever been sent.”

You’d except a girl who gets sent Chanel rods from Karl -a child star who’s been part of the highest-grossing movie franchise in history for the past 12 years and spent the past three juggling Burberry campaigns with Hollywood Movies – to be spoilt and messed up. Emma Watson is neither. Softly spoken and introspective, the 22-year-old Harry Potter actress has clung to normality by her fingernails. “I won’t lie to you – it’s not been easy,” she smiles. “Celebrity is definitely the hardest part of what I do. But you just have to hope that people look past all that – past the overblown hyper the industry -and see you.” When a mere haircut provokes double-page spreads in broadsheets, every outfit is dissected in fashion magazines and every man you’re pictured with is a ‘boyfriend’, that’s not easily done.

But Emma hasn’t let that effect her life choices. In 2009 she enrolled at Brown university in the US to study european woman’s history and drama, trying her best to ignore the paparrazi following her around campus, and picked a poignant high-school drama, The Perks of being a Wallflower (see out review page 217) as her first post-potter project.…

What is it about the Smiths that makes the melancholic 80s band something of a Bat Signal for cultured and cute vintage-wearing dream girls? In writer-director Stephen Chbosky’s new The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a wonderful film based on Chbosky’s own novel, the pixieish, Smiths-adoring love interest, Sam, is played by Emma Watson, in her first significant post-Hermione role. Sam’s suitor, Charlie, is played by Logan Lerman. Perhaps inevitably, he is a clinically depressed introvert who befriends Sam and her punky stepbrother, Patrick—the inestimable Ezra Miller—at a high-school football game. Charlie and Sam soon reveal their shared love of British glum-pop, including the Smiths’ “Asleep,” which is ironic, or appropriate, because the film details how Charlie finally wakes up thanks to Sam’s tender, nonjudgmental companionship. The metaphor is not as heavy-handed as it sounds.

If Hollywood were a high-school cafeteria—a tremendous stretch of the imagination!—the three young leads would most certainly sit at the center of the cool table. Watson and Lerman will next star in Darren Aronofsky’s big-screen adaptation of Genesis chapters 6 to 9, Noah, while Miller will play opposite Mia Wasikowska in Madame Bovary, providing an even greater service to teenagers than showcasing the triumph of the loner: giving them a way around reading Madame Bovary.…

Little Hermione is all grown up and showing off her sexy side in her first post-Potter leading role. Now Watson talks to Glamour about her life, her hair, her dating rules, and all those “hot bods” in Hollywood.

Emma Watson is just so cute. She’s got that little face and that artfully messy hair, and she’s wearing the sweetest white summer dress you’ve ever seen. But when she starts speaking over breakfast at the Carlyle hotel in New York City, it becomes very clear that our old friend Hermione is anything but childlike: Watson is smart and funny and passionate about becoming an actress with a capital A. Her first starring role after Harry Potter, as a wild child in this month’s teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower, was a conscious break from her wizard alter ego; at the same time, she’s becoming known in the fashion world as a risk taker, favouring up-and-coming English designers she’s discovered through her own research. Glamour sat down with the 22-year-old native Brit, who’s living in New York while filming Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, to discuss her plans to return to Brown University and her desire to do a (well-written!) rom-rom.

What was it like to see yourself on screen in Perks as not-Hermione?
It was a pretty emotional experience! I have to say, I cried a lot the first time I watched it.

At the parts you’re supposed to cry at or just randomly?
Pretty much from the half point on, I kind of lost it.…