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. But there is another side. Someone who remains, despite her best efforts, emotionally overwhelmed by the vibrations of fame.

We had just begun to talk about the hazards of being a private person in a public world when, as a gesture to underline the absurdity of it all, I pulled out of my bag a copy of the unauthorised biography – a book that chronicles how it feels to be Watson, despite the fact she never met the author.

It hit a nerve. She has it in her to laugh it off, but this morning it has elicited a raw and unfiltered response. Tears fill her brown eyes, which remain unblinking and fixated on the cover image of herself. It stares back. She can’t look away as she tries to make sense of it.

“I read these pages and it has nothing to do with my real life, who I am. It is a piece of fiction, but that’s my face on the cover.”

She is holding the book with both hands and turns suddenly defiant. “The first time I saw this book was when I was on the set in New Orleans,” she states. “For ‘The End of the World’ – a movie I just did. This super-cute 11- or 12-year-old girl came up to me and she had pages folded down and she had her special bookmark in it. It looked like she’d been carrying it around for a while. And she really wanted me to sign it. It’s really weird that it’s not just Hermione who has become someone important to people who love those books, but the idea of who Emma Watson is too.”

That she refers to herself in the third person shows how removed she is from her public persona. Indeed, she says it feels like she has three selves: Fictional Emma, Real Emma, and then the person she happens to be playing at the time. Since the age of nine, that person has been Hermione Granger.

Watson has been a famous person for 13 of her 22 years. Her tearful manner reveals she is not hardened to the realities of it.

“I started of at the beginning of the ['Harry Potter'] series adamantly protecting my own sense of self and my identity as Emma,” she says. The book has now been placed, cover down, in the space between us. “I was this nine-year-old who would be sat in these interviews going, ‘No, I’m not anything like her, I’m different because of this and this and this’ – at nine.” She sighs. “People would say, ‘You are really Hermione, aren’t you?’ and it went on and on till it got to a point where I said, fine. It’s easier for me to say we’re one person because that keeps everyone happy. I’ll go with that.” The parallels were convenient to draw.

Hermione and Watson were both hard-working, cerebral, academically driven students who aim high, get straight As, and are eager to please. But what separates Watson is that she’s an emotional person. She has unresolved and conflicted feelings that surface occasionally, as they have on this September morning.

“Today is the first day of the craziness,” she says, referring to the two weeks of nonstop publicity she has ahead, promoting her latest film, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. “I walk out of my apartment and there are paparazzi that. I’m flying to L.A. and then Toronto and then New York and back to London – it makes me emotional because it’s intense.”

Does she have the constitution to be a big movie star? “I’ve thought about that a lot,” she says. “And no, I don’t have the constitution to be a big movie star. Or a big celebrity.” She pauses. “But I do have the constitution to be a good actress. Some of the stuff is really hard for me. But I really like my job when I’m doing my job. It’s just there’s this weird blue that’s happening between being a celebrity and being an actress.”

It’s unusual for a child to grow up playing a single fictional character. Not to mention a character that makes them arguably the world’s most famous English schoolgirl. Watson wasn’t brought up in a show business family – her parents are lawyers – and she wasn’t prepared for the tsunami of attention that overtook her life.

“I was nine – I did school plays – but I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she says, still sounding in shock with how it played out. To go from obscurity to being one of the most famous girls on the planet, earning millions of dollars – an entire childhood spent oscillating between film set and a classroom – an identity crisis was inevitable.

“That’s why I’m crying. I don’t know how to juggle this leap: from a safe character I played, and a safe persona I had, to promoting this new character in ‘Perks’.”

Coming out of the bubble of the Potter films – eight in total – all she knew was that she wanted to do something contemporary next. “I didn’t want to jump into a Jane Austen role. I knew I could get fastened into a corset and never get out again,” she laughs.

‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ is a coming-of-age story, based on the popular epistolary novel of the same name by Stephen Chbosky. It’s set in a typical American high school in Pittsburgh, and Watson plays the rebellious character Sam, who is extroverted, complicated and damaged. She is very good at sustaining an American accent and believable as an uninhibited teenager.

Is she scared of the rejection – that people might not accept her as someone other than Hermione? “No, I don’t care if they do. For once, I really don’t. Making this film was one of the most important things I feel I’ve done. I’m proud of it. If people want to say whatever they want to say – I’m okay with it because for once, I don’t need that validation.”

Since the Potter franchise ended, she’s made a decision not to continue at the level of fame and attention that those films brought, choosing roles in quality independent films. She had a small part in ‘My Week with Marilyn’ and, aside from ‘Perks’, she’s shot ‘The End of the World’, with Seth Rogen in New Orleans, and ‘The Bling Ring’, directed by Sofia Coppola.

She’s hoping that with these new roles will come a different, more manageable type of success. “As a child, I didn’t get to make many choices in all of this. What I need to keep reminding myself is that, going ahead, I do have options. It was a revelation to me the other days, saying, ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk about that,’ and feeling like it was my right to decide if I wanted to speak about something. Of course I did the English thing and apologised profusely, but I did have ownership of my own life.”

So, the other life. The real life. What’s that like? “It’s funny because what I’ve been trying to say is, I want people to know less. But then I also want to draw them together a little bit too.”

This dilemma played out when she first went to Brown University. Watson wanted to immerse herself in student life and chose Brown because, aside from being academically rigorous, it provided a full Ivy League collegiate experience entirely on campus in Rhode Island.

Was she worried at all about getting in?

“Not to sound arrogant, but I killed myself with those grades,” she says. “I left as little room as possible for anyone to say I got in on anything other than merit.”

Once she got there, however, her professional life impinged on her studies. She was still filming parts of ‘Harry Potter’ during her first year, and there were other obligations.

“I was doing reshoots. I was going voice recording. And I had two movies left to promote. It’s part of my job to show up. I would go from doing the ‘Harry Potter’ press tour and the red carpets to then being in class the next day. I felt like I was schizophrenic, living two completely different parallel lives. And that messes with you. I wanted to start fresh – but you can’t – I can’t divorce the side of me that is an actress and a public person, right? I have to accept that all the sides of me are part of me and I have to find a way to bring them together a bit. I tried to keep them separate but it’s too much of a head-f***.”

It’s heartening to hear her reveal a thoughtful and healthy contemplation about all this, and just as I’m about to mention it, she has second thoughts.

“I should have rescheduled this interview, because I think I’m giving you a sense of somone who is a victim.”

I reassure her that this is not the case. Watson has a friendship with J.K. Rowling, who also experienced the massive explosion of worldwide attention, albeit as an adult. They have discussed the trajectory, and it’s been a source of comfort.

“She’s someone I’ve talked to about this. There’s no way you can really advise. Just knowing that I’m not alone – there are other people experiencing it …”

And then there’s the money. Her personal wealth has been estimated at £26 million, and when the subject is raised, she bristles. She moves away from the table and leans against the banquette so that her back us up against the wall – literally.

“People are convinced that that’s the most interesting thing about me, and it’s going to take time to convince them otherwise – but I’m going to try.”

She looks exasperated. “I was interviewed at 13 or 14, and the journalist said, ‘So that means you’d never have to work for money?’ and I said yes. The quote was, ‘I never have to work for money again,’ and that quote has haunted me. People took it to mean that I wasn’t grateful, or aware of how fortunate I am. If I say it’s something that has affected my life very little, or that it doesn’t mean a lot to me, it seems I’m not appreciative.”

She shakes her head when I asked if she has any indulgences. “I don’t have a need for a lot of money right now. I’m still renting my house. I’m travelling for film work: the studios usually put me up. I still stay at my parents’ house. I have my one car – I didn’t buy an expensive car because I’m a terrible driver. I’d trash it. So I pay for my phone and my laptop, and I bought a record player – I like records – nice little things like that, but I don’t even feel like it [money] is there. It’s not that I take it for granted. It’s just that it doesn’t … I’m sure when the time comes, when I want to start a family and I want to buy a house and I want to send my kids to school it’s going to be incredibly meaningful to me then.”

There are a multitude of invasive and shallow things that go along with being a star of her magnitude. Like the global speculation generated by her chopping off her hair.

“I could not have anticipated the level of attention and scrutiny that haircut got. ‘Why did she do it? what was the motivation behind it?’ That is news to people? My mum has short hair. I’ve always wanted to cut my hair short. It wasn’t calculated to make a splash.”

She laughs at how people think she’s shrewder than she is.

“People said that was a really smart career move – it’s like, I just really liked it. I wanted to look like Mia Farrow. It was just a haircut.”

Every now and then, Watson says, she brings a friend with her to experience what she’s going through. It’s almost as if she needs a witness. “I had a friend from England come with me to one of the award shows. She did the red carpet with me and we got inside and her hands were shaking. The adrenaline – it’s a lot. Having a friend there is a nice reminder that it is abnormal. It’s a totally weird thing to do.”

Watson admits that she has got into the habit of doing things to make other people happy and it’s something she’s working to let go of. She says she gave Warner Bros. hell about getting time off to do her A-levels. “So I didn’t completely lie down – I did stand up for myself.” She smiles.

She spent a year studying at Oxford and will take the first half of next year off from work to complete her degree at Brown. She has one semester left. She might try to take some of the classes in New York – art lessons are among the options – and she is renting an apartment in the options – and she is renting an apartment in the city while shooting the movie she’s currently working on: Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’, with Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins.

Her schedule is full. At the end of next year she’ll begin ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and she’s talking with the director, Guillermo del Toro, about whom he will cast as the Beast. The project came about when she was sent the script, and she chose del Toro as the director, a mark of her power, stature and taste.

When she has had to audition for parts, it’s always gone well. She went up for the part of Ila, Noah’s adopted daughter, and her agent called afterwards to see how it went and she said: “This part belongs to me.”

“She was, like, ‘Well, that’s cocky,’ and I said, ‘No, you don’t understand, I know I’m meant to play this role.’ The same way I did with Hermione – my parents were looking at this nine-year-old girl like she’s crazy because, I don’t know why, but I really felt it was going to work out. They were trying to prepare me for the disappointment of not getting it.”

Has she ever had it not work out? Not professionally, she says. But surely there’s been disappointment? “Yeah,” she says softly. “There has.”

There is a long pause. There’s been a moment where I discovered I’m very breakable and very human.” Another pause. “When I took time off from Brown. I was done. I was so exhausted I was like a ghost walking around. I kind of realised: no, Emma, you can’t make two films back to back while doing a degree, while flying backwards and forwards and trying to promote the film at the same time, while being a daughter and a sister, everything. You can’t do it. There will be backlash. I think it was about realising …”

She wells up. “At that moment I thought I was broken and I thought i was used up and I thought I had nothing left to give. I’d given everything and I didn’t really know what was left. But there’s a part of us that is unbreakable. You always find it again.”

Where does the resilience come from?

She thinks about this and speaks slowly. “I don’t want to get into it too much, but I was brought up by a single, full-time working mother. We were ferried back and forth with my brother from London to see my dad, who also had a full-time, very demanding job. Being the eldest, I’m the eldest of seven, dealing with moving country – all of that change made me strong.”

Watson was born in Paris in 1990 and lived there until 1995 when her parents separated and returned to England. She and her younger brother, Alex, lived with their mum in Oxford and split time between their parents, visiting their father frequently in London. Following the divorce her parents met new partners, and she had three new siblings on her father’s side and two on her mother’s.

“I think my parents, funnily enough in that situation, looked to me for strength,” she says.

That’s a lot of pressure, I say. She nods. Just then, a woman approaches the table and reminds Watson that her next interview is a “pre-interview” for the Letterman show. She’s taping it this afternoon.

She’s done the show before – several times – but she still gets nervous. She woke up feeling anxious about it, “but it will be fine”, she says, confidently. “It usually does work out fine. I just have to steel myself. He asks whatever he feels like.”

For instance? “Last time I did the show, Dan Radcliffe had just come out about his alcoholism. I said, ‘Please don’t ask about that. It’s not for me to talk about.’ And, of course, because I asked them not to mention it, he made a point of mentioning it.” She smiles. Naturally, he’ll ask about her love life, which is off limits. She’s talked around it before – how she’s had a hard time dating.

She laughs. “Those quotes have been regurgitated since I was 12. Who doesn’t have a hard time dating when they’re 12?”

She’s been photographed with a fellow student from Oxford, but she won’t comment on this at all. In a recent article it was mentioned that she won’t date actors, but she points out that it’s more accurate to say that she hasn’t actively pursued people who are in her industry and who are famous.

“I’m just aware it [fame] makes it complicated. You can’t choose who you fall for, but I’ve managed to fall for people who I’ve been at university with or whatever. They can see how uncomfortable I am with it [fame], so they’re not isolated by feeling overwhelmed with it all. They can see I am too. It’s naive to think that it would be simple or easy or desirable to date someone who’s in the limelight.”

As our time winds down, I suspect she’s unaware that having shown a vulnerable side has worked to her advantage. “I know when to put the armour on and I’m usually pretty good at it. But underneath that armour, there isn’t a special jab that I’m given because I’m famous or I’ve earned a lot of money. Like every other human being, I’m trying to figure out … life.”

She slides out of the booth and I wish her luck on the Letterman show. “Thanks,” she says, waving goodbye. “I’ll need it!”

Later that night, I watch how Letterman interacts with her. There isn’t the coy flirting that goes on with some of the other actresses, but that could be her age; it would be unseemly. Also, he’s watched her grow up. She has made a dignified transition from child star to adulthood and so he is instead paternalistic in a way that reflects his respect. She holds her own. Walking the line between Fictional Emma Watson and Real Emma Watson.

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. So while admittedly “super-anxious,” she turned to her co-stars Ezra Miller and Lerman and writer/director Stephen Chbosky, peppering them with questions about prom and homecoming and teen hangouts.

Despite their differences, Chbosky immediately saw why Watson would be perfect as Sam.

“There’s so many things that link Emma to Sam,” Chbosky says. “I first met her in New York City at this hotel, and we met for breakfast. What I saw was this girl who was beautiful and successful, but there was something about her that was lonesome and dying to make a connection to being young.

“That was perfect for Sam. Emma has so much talent, and she wanted to showcase all these other sides of her. This was a great vehicle for her.”

Watson, too, connected deeply with the character.

“The same way that Sam is quite hard on herself, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Finding a way to like my imperfections and accept that I’m a human being and doing my best and finding a way to love myself and respect myself, that was something that really spoke to me. I had a tough adolescence in my own way, and my friends got me through it. I can relate to the special people who get you through hard times.”

On set in Pittsburgh, Watson went to the mall and hung out with the cast, with no airs or graces about her. Chbosky marvels that for someone who grew up “in the eye of the hurricane,” Watson was never aloof or distant or cold.

“As a person, she’s a perfect combination of a proper English girl and a bit of a circus performer. She and I had a laugh once where I drew a diagram of her life and her personality. There’s the half that’s always on time and considerate and professional and very serious. And there’s the side that loves to dance and loves a good joke and is silly and can really enjoy making beans on toast for a bunch of her fellow actors at 3 a.m. She’s both things at the same time.”

That combination of propriety and naughtiness is why Coppola cast Watson in ‘Bling Ring’, about a teen gang that burglarizes celebrity homes in Hollywood.

“I like that she’s so different from the character and was really dedicated to transforming herself,” Coppola says. “I also love that she has a sweet young face but is playing not a nice girl. It’s fun to see her that way that you wouldn’t expect. (Emma) is very nice and smart. She seems very aware. It’s impressive having grown up the way she has, she’s serious and hardworking.”

There’s something incandescent about Watson, an elegance coupled with an endearing bubbliness. She’s tiny, yet the opposite of fragile. Despite growing up in the business, she seems neither jaded nor spoiled. Financially, she’s firmly entrenched in the top 1% in England, where she lives (and dates Will Adamowicz). She’s the face of the cosmetics brand Lancome. On this day, she’s dressed in a gorgeous embellished Jason Wu top, which any fashionista knows doesn’t come cheap. But ask her about being so wealthy, and she doesn’t talk about the perks the money affords.

“It’s funny. For a lot of people, the focus of their lives is earning a living, and that’s the reason they get out of bed in the morning. So, in a way, you’re trying to find another thing to live for.

“It’s amazing and freeing. It gives me the freedom to do the things I care about. It gives me choices. It’s kind of daunting, and it’s kind of weird as well. I never pictured my life turning out this way.”

Is she able to have any kind of normalcy? Or is grabbing dinner in public just asking for trouble because she’s so recognizable?

“I have to be strategic when I go out. I can’t just go to Central Park in the middle of the day. That isn’t a real option for me. Sometimes it’s annoying, but generally, it’s manageable. I just try to surround myself with people who make me feel normal.”

Part of that is why she went to college and hopes to graduate from Brown University this summer. She has shot six films in two years, so life has been hectic. Watson sounds a little rueful when discussing her schedule but says she has no intention of walking away without a diploma.

“I’m slowly making my way … I’ve been back to back for a long time. It’s been really fun. I’m really glad I did it. It gave me my life in a way.

“When you’re playing someone else and you’re playing a public persona for the media, you almost lose your own identity and who you are. Being able to go to school and be around people who don’t work in this industry was a big part in helping me stay somewhat sane. I made a lot of sacrifices. It was really hard to get it done. But I’m so glad I did.”

She treasures her college experience. In fact, the only time Watson gets upset is when she’s asked about stories that circulated earlier about her being bullied at Brown, a school that has been attended by legions of boldfaced names, including John F. Kennedy Jr.

“It upset me so much. It made me so mad. It was such irresponsible journalism and had nothing to do with my experience. It’s horrible. And with no evidence. No grounds whatsoever. People were asking me if I was OK. It broke my heart. I was treated so well at Brown. I was spitting. It’s not what I experienced. It made me mad, very mad.”

Mostly, though, Watson seems balanced and enviably Zen. She’s loving her job at the moment and appreciates the life she’s able to lead because of it. So much so that when she’s home, she goes to the movies with her friends, despite the crowds and ringing cellphones and gawkers.

“It’s so worth it to me. I love the communal experience of watching a movie together. I go and buy records. I hang out with my cats. I paint. I do yoga. I sleep. Occasionally, I read. This is a book (co-star Ezra Miller) is getting me to read, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. He loves that book. I haven’t finished it yet.”

Watson herself seems to be on a journey of sorts, trying to discover what’s ahead of her. If the acting thing ended tomorrow, she’d be a visual artist.

But for now, she’s content to see what filmmaking has to offer — Watson is now shooting Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’, playing Russell Crowe’s daughter Ila, and follows that up with Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Beauty’, his take on Beauty and the Beast— and satisfied that, yes, audiences will accept her as something other than a smartypants Hogwarts witch.

“It’s less hard than I thought it would be. I feel like there’s a side to me that I’ve kept, that people haven’t seen yet. It doesn’t feel too scary. I understand why people don’t want to let go of me as Hermione. I’m not expecting it to happen overnight.”

Source: USA Today

“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. And the cast is awesome. And it is funny, but deeply sad, all at the same time. I don’t know, it’s kind of great. I’m really proud of it.”

Source: TheInsider.com

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. “I read a lot of high school coming-of-age pieces they didn’t feel authentic. This spoke to me,” Watson, 22, told Yahoo! Movies. “I love that Sam is such a unique individual girl: creative, fun-loving, spontaneous and big hearted. I loved her.”

There seems to be a rite of passage for child stars to transition to adult roles through taking more sexually explicit parts. Daniel Radcliffe followed years of playing Harry Potter by appearing naked on Broadway in ‘Equus.’ Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley, dropped trou in ‘Wild Target’ opposite Emily Blunt.

Emma, sleep-deprived and barefoot, curled up on a couch beside Writer-Director Chbosky. They had been up late the night before for the movie’s gala premiere, an emotional high for both of them as well as a late night. (Shortly after our meeting, Watson cancelled three hours of scheduled interviews due to exhaustion.) The actress reflected: “Gosh. I guess it is a difficult transition for child actors because you catch someone when they are still forming themselves, and their identity. They haven’t yet become what they are going to be. You don’t even know if they are going to want to be an actor. ”

Starring in ‘Perks’ has improved Watson’s confidence about her career choices. “One of the reasons I wanted to work with Steve was that he was my Charlie,” she said, referring to Lerman’s class wallflower whose adoring gaze boosts Sam’s self-esteem. “Steve gave me so much belief in myself. This movie really helped me find my feet. It made me want to go and do more.”

Chbosky chimed in: “I saw Emma in all the ‘Harry Potter’ roles. She was always getting better. I saw her in ‘Goblet of Fire’ in this beautiful scene in front of the staircase with Daniel Radcliffe. It broke my heart. But it was meeting her that was the icing on the cake. In Emma I saw a kindred spirit that takes the weight of the world on her. I knew she would make me a better director because I felt an enormous responsibility to her as an artist and a person because of the transition from what she was to what she was going to be. Because what I recognized in Emma was greatness. This is the beginning of an amazing discovery of a young actress.”

Source: Yahoo! Movies

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. “There are some parts of me right now that are probably going through adolescence.”

Her work ethic is fairly grown-up, though. While attending Brown and working on last year’s ‘Harry Potter’ finale, Watson squeezed in a small role in the Marilyn Monroe drama ‘My Week with Marilyn’.

After ‘Perks,’ she co-starred in Sofia Coppola’s 2013 release ‘The Bling Ring,’ playing one of a group of celebrity-obsessed Los Angeles teens who burgle the homes of Hollywood stars. Watson also has a cameo role in Seth Rogen’s upcoming comedy ‘The End of the World,’ playing a version of herself alongside other stars coping with the apocalypse during a party at James Franco’s place.

Watson came to Toronto for the ‘Perks’ premiere on a break from her next project, co-starring with Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Hopkins in director Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic ‘Noah’. She heads back to work Tuesday on that film, which also features her ‘Perks’ co-star Logan Lerman.

Adapted by director Stephen Chbosky from his own novel, ‘Perks’ casts Lerman as a deeply troubled high school freshman who falls in with a crowd of smart, nurturing seniors dealing with plenty of issues of their own. Watson’s Sam becomes his dream girl, an old soul with a dark past herself earlier in her teen years.

After a decade as Hermione, Watson aims to give ‘Harry Potter’ fans a taste of what she can do outside the world of witches and wizards.

“I hope what they can see is that I am able to transform, that there are other sides of me that perhaps they haven’t seen yet, and that they might allow me a little bit of room,” Watson said. “I mean, just doing American really is different. People have said to me that they keep forgetting it’s me when they see the movie, which for me is more than enough. That’s a success in itself for me, really.”

Source: WashingtonPost.com

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. They started talking to me about it and it turned out that this book has this amazing following. It was great.

I thought the cast was fantastic in capturing these characters, showing their relatable inner lives… ?
Yeah. There’s no way that you can read the book, having been through any kind of High School experience and just not… even not just a High School experience, but just having been through being a teenager and not being able to relate to one of the experiences of the characters. It just covers so much. It’s so real, it’s so true. I didn’t really need to go to an American High School or go to Prom, or have any of those kind of experience to be able to relate to Sam or Charlie or Brad, or any of the characters.

In capturing these characters, what was it like building the chemistry between your fellow cast members?
When I came onto the movie I was very anxious about doing loads of research and trying to figure out how I was going to create these kind of friendships that they’ve obviously had for such a long time. I was really worried about it all and I was doing all this prep work and Stephen Chbosky was like, “You don’t even have to worry about that. Your all going to be best friends.” I was like, “Really?” He was like, “Yeah, you’re all going to be best friends and you’re going to have the summer of your life.” And it turned out to be completely true (laughs), I’ve met probably some of my friends for life on this movie.

Can you talk a little about Charlie and Sam’s connection in the story? And how was it working as Sam alongside Logan Lerman as Charlie?
Charlie is a kid who’s been through a pretty rough time, and he’s the sweetest, most sensitive soul you will ever meet. At the time we meet him at the beginning of ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ his best friend Michael has just died and he’s in a really scared, anxious place. He’s just coming to a new High School, he’s meeting new people, he’s dealing with this loss, he’s dealing with his awkwardness and then Sam, even more so than Patrick at the beginning, she really sees that. And she decides with Patrick to take him under their wing and to take care of him, shepherd him through High School essentially – which can be an intimidating place.

Watching Logan be Charlie was just devastating. He so innately understands Charlie’s awkwardness and his innocence. And Logan has that, it’s interesting because Logan is incredibly smart and very professional and very hard working, but then there’s also this side of Logan that’s incredibly sweet. He just thinks the best of people all the time – and that’s Charlie. And he also has that kind of honesty and that purity.

What was it like working with Stephen Chbosky, someone who directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and wrote the novel that ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ feature film is based on? A person who knows this world and these characters inside out?
Amazing, it was absolutely amazing to have the man who conceptualised it, who dreamed up my character, who dreamed up the whole world in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ directing it as well as writing it – as well as having already released the book. It’s such a pure line of connection and he has such vision. He was amazing, really amazing.

Source: FlicksandBits.com

“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?

“I don’t live my life like that. My life is different and it’s taken on a very different shape. It’s not worse. Just different. There are parts of me that are very old and parts of me that are very young.”

Source: USAToday.com

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. “It’s not some wild break away from Harry Potter,” she explains from her JFK-bound car in New York. “Because I don’t really want to get away from Harry Potter – I’ve never seen it as shackle. But I knew the second I read the script that I wanted thus film to be seen.” If anything it was the films coming of age themes, and its generous-hearted heroine, Sam, that struck a chord. “I wish someone had told me at 15: ‘You accept the love that you think you deserve,’” she says, quoting one of the seminal lines of the film. “I would have approached my relationships completely different if they had. I like this idea of quality control: that we don’t have to accept just anyone into our lives. People talk about love as though it just happens to you – as though you’re a victim in it all, when actually you can make good choices and bad. But women have a natural tendency to want to nurture and take care of men,” she maintains. “You always think that the guy is going to end up coming around and that you’re going to be the one that saves him – like the Oasis song. Actually I don’t think that you can change other people, but women always hope for the best.”

These impassioned little monologues – hastily broadened out into generalities – are as close as Emma gets to talking about bet love life. Whether it’s her two-year relationship with financier Jay Barrymore, flings with One Night Only singer George Craig (the two allegedly got together after the rocker liked her face in their video for Say you don’t want it.) And her Perks of Being a Wallflower co-star Johnny Simmons, or the most recent man in her life, student Will Adamovicz, Emma had remained tight-lipped about her boyfriends. “I tend to date people who are quite introspective,” is all she will say. “I like deep thinkers.”

Born in Paris and educated at headington school in Oxfordshire, the multi-millionairess (thanks to Hermione Granger, Emma’s said to be worth £24 million) inherited a serious streak from Jed lawyer parents, Jacqueline and Chris, who divorced when Emma was just five. She was always treated as an adult, she says – to the extent that neither she nor her younger brother Alex, were never allowed to order from the kids’ menu in restaurants. Such early discipline made it easier for Emma when she found herself in the unenviable position for being a teenage role model to a generation of children growing up with Harry Potter. “Obviously I was aware that young people were watching me and following what I was doing, but I was fortunate to have had so much freedom from a young age. I started travelling and working away from home when I was nine, and there would have been so many opportunities there if I’d wanted to take them. If I’d wanted to get blind raving drunk I could have done; if I wanted to do drugs I could have done. Luckily I don’t have an additive personality, and I don’t really drink.” She’s sensible, I suggest. “I’m not sensible” she flings back, aghast. “I’m just me, I guess.”

Had it not been for her natural flair for fashion, the media would almost certainly have cast this demure, literary-minded teenager in the role of wallflower. But well before that pixie cut had set the style commentators’ pulses racing, earning the actress a contract as the face of Lancôme, Emma bad begun to experiment with clothes, appearing at the front row at Burberry and Chanel, and challenging the critics with risky choices like chain-motifed Rodarte, leather Christopher Kane and corseted Bottega Veneta numbers. “I’m not going to tell you some of my biggest style disasters because you’ll dig out the pictures,” she laughs. “I wore a lot of my stepmother’s clothes when I was young – things that were just far too big for me too – but my all time favourites are probably the white Alexander McQueen dress I wore the the Empire awards and the vintage Ossie Clark dress I found in a shop around the corner from my house.”

She’s low key in private, preferring to go out make-up free in jeans and an Agnes B T-shirt, but thanks to an 80’s-tastic wardrobe in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, she’s been channelling her inner Cyndi Lauper in puffball skirts, Dr Martins and cropped cardis. “I’ve also rocking some high-waisted denim shorts recently,” she smiles. “It helps that I’ve accepted my body shape more as I’ve got older. I went through a stage of wanting that straight-up-and-down model look, but I have curves and hips and in the end you have to accept yourself as you are.” Harder then the interest in her private life has been the the physical scrutiny Emma’s been subjected to over the years. “It made me a very self-conscious teenager so it makes me sad to hear girls constently putting themselves down. We have these unbelievably high expectations of ourselves, when actually were human beings, and our bodys have a function. We say that the pressures coming from men, but actually it’s from each other. I think women feel so much pressure these days and it can turn us against one another. But we really damage our own confidence when we put ourselves down, so I try not to.”

She’s not always successful, she admits, anxious to point out that she has the same insecurities as other girls. “I had terrible skin at one point and had to wear braces at another, and my weight has fluctuated between a size 6 and a 10. When you’re growing, your body is still figuring itself out and it takes a while to settle down.” Her happy weight? “Probably not far from where I am now, but it depends on my life at the time. If I’m filming action scenes and running from Dementors 12 hours a day, it’s great, but if I’m sitting in the library revising 12 hours a day, inevitably it changes.” She’s lucky enough to have people who can snap her out of it when the pressure gets too much. “Still, it’s hard to constantly compare yourself with other people. The papers have said everything about me, from ‘having the figure of Marilyn Monroe’ to ‘looking unhealthy and anorexic’, and that has been incredibly hurtful. Still I keep telling myself that I’m a human being, an imperfect human being who’s not made to look like a doll, and that who I am as a person is more important than whether at that moment is more important I have a nice figure.”

The problem with a beautiful, intelligent and accomplished young woman like Emma is that, while she suffers from the same vulnerabilities as any girl, there’s no inner torment or dysfunction there for people to pick at. So she keeps calm and carries on, with plans to return to brown in January (“I made such nice friends there”), and invites her friends to join her on the set of upcoming film Noah in Iceland – her destination today – when she gets lonely. “You have to work to maintain relationships when you’re constantly away, but when my best friends and I get together it doesn’t feel like a day had passed.”

With her studies and her relationship gaining importance, it seems the acting may take a back seat – at least for a while. She’s not interested in “conquering Hollywood”, she says, and she’s not – she insists, contary to recent reports – stripping off to play Anastasia Steele in EL James’s bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey (“I haven’t even read the book!”). For now, she’d she’d settle for being considered “a good, versatile actress. I feel happiest when doing something creative – writing, painting, acting or dancing, so I think I’ll always complement the acting with something else. If you act all the time, you’re spending your life living other peoples lives. Really I’d quite like it if things calmed down a bit,” she says quietly “and I think that will happen naturally.” Perhaps, then, the only pap shots of Emma will be of her on a riverbank somewhere in Oxfordshire, finally using that Chanel fishing rod.

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.

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. Making this movie was so pivotal for me because I realised I do really want to be an actress, which wasn’t something I fully knew, since Harry Potter was such a singular experience. Obviously I’m nervous to see what other people think, but it kind of doesn’t matter to me. It’s so cheesy to say this, but it’s the journey, not the end goal, that’s important.

Your character, Sam, is rebellious – she’s experiments with drugs and has quite a sexual history. I’ve read that in real life, you’re pretty straitlaced.
Oh, yes, Sam’s real. She has insecurities and a past. She’s very human, and that’s what drew me to play her. There are just so many teenage roles that don’t have very much to do with what it’s actually like to be a teenager.

Have you seen HBO’s Girls? That’s a show about twentysomethings that’s getting attention for its realism.
Yeah, I am literally obsessed with [Girls creator and star] Lena Dunham. She’s, like, my favourite person in the world. I follow her on Twitter; I read her every day. And, yes, Girls is an example of something so refreshing because it feels real.

I also read that you met with studio executives to persuade them to fund Perks. What was that like?
No one wanted to make it at first, because it deals with difficult subject matter, so I basically went out and pitched it to studios myself. It felt very empowering to be able to get something made that I really believed in.

Your fans from Potter are so loyal and will follow you anywhere. That must be a great feeling.
It’s amazing to have that, because the media can be tough. I’ll read something stupid that someone’s written about me, and then some eight-year-old girl will be like, “You’re Hermione! I love Harry Potter so much. Can I have an autograph?” And that feels so validating.

Now you’re filming Noah with Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, and you just finished The Bling Ring, which is directed by Sofia Coppola. Both are big departures from Harry Potter. I assume that was on purpose?
Yeah, I really wanted to make a point of taking contemporary roles. I knew that I could get sewed into a corset for the rest of my life quite easily if I came out of Potter and did an English period drama or something.

Would you ever do a comedy?
I would love to do a comedy. I’m trying to find a romantic comedy that isn’t …

Horribly written?
Maybe I’ll beg Lena to write it for me!

Amazing. So you’re going back to school?
I have one semester left, which I’ll go back in January to do, probably at Brown. Brown is great because they offer independent study programs, and there are lots of different options, which is one of the reasons I chose it.

Have your friends graduated yet?
No, they’ll graduate next summer. There’s definitely the possibility I could graduate on time, so I’m just kind of quietly making my way.

Was it easy to make friends at school?
I’m sorry, do you mind if I don’t talk about this?

That’s fine!
I just – I don’t know. I just feel like if I start opening the door to talking about my university experience, then people just kind of … own everything. There was a lot of stuff a couple of years ago saying that I was bullied at Brown and awful things like that, none of which were true. But it’s my personal experience and it’s my personal life … and I would just go crazy if I didn’t have a reality, if I don’t have a life outside of the roles I play. The entertainment industry is pretty nuts, and having had that experience outside of it and going to university has really made a big difference. It’s important to me to feel like I have my own life.

Which must be difficult when you’re being trailed by papparazzi.
At Brown, every time I come out of the gyn, there’d be paparazzi, and they’d just start following me around with my friends. It made things pretty difficult to be normal.

Sorry to say, but I did see paparazzi pictures of you kissing at Coachella.
I know! My friend got me tickets for my birthday, and what am I going to say? No, I’m not going to go, because I don’t want to be photographed? But it was a huge crowd and I thought there was no way anyone could get pictures of me, but somehow they found me. It’s difficult on my dating life, because anyone I get photographed with is automatically my boyfriend. So it makes it look as if I’ve had, like, 6,000 boyfriends!

You’ve said in the past that you don’t want to date another actor.
Yeah, I try not to. It definitely makes me nervous. I haven’t tried to make other celebrity friends or date people who are in my industry, because it’s difficult and it can be really superficial. I’m lucky that most of the people I’ve dated I’ve been at university with.

I wanted to talk to you about your style. You’ve had some amazing fashion moments.
That’s so nice! In my real life I can be a bit scruffy, but I love dressing up for the red carpet. I really try to do my research and look into new people who are coming onto the scene. It’s creative, and I’m really into art, and it’s fun.

Do you have stylists working with you?
Yeah, I have to at this point. When I was younger, I used to do it all myself, but I’ve had to get help because it’s gotten to a stage where I can’t show up in my Converses or whatever I bought from High Street. And just practically, these gowns are ridiculous. You’re being photographed from every angle, so not only do you have to consider how the thing looks, but whether you’re going to be able to sit in it and whether people are going to be able to see up your skirt.

You once said that women in L.A. look kind of scary. Do you still think that’s true?
I think there’s obviously something that they’re all working toward, that they want to look like, and they end up looking quite similar, which I think is a shame.

And it seems all the actresses who are truly successful do look like individuals.
I feel like if you’re distracted by how beautifully toned someone’s arms are, then you’re not really being drawn into their performance. You’re just thinking about that hot bod! I think Carey Mulligan is amazing. She’s a huge girl crush of mine. And also Emma Stone. People love them because they’re real and they embrace it.

By the way, I see you’re growing out your hair.
I have to for roles. But if I had it my way, I would have just kept it short forever. Of course, men like long hair. There’s no two ways about it. The majority of boys around me are like, “Why did you do that? That’s such an error.” And I was like, “Well, honestly, I don’t care what you think!” I’ve never felt so confident as I did with short hair – I felt really good in my own skin.

We loved it too! The funny thing about child actors is, there’s the real possibility that they’re going to turn out, well, average-looking. But you lucked out and grew up to be gorgeous!
[Laughs] I can’t talk about how other people perceive me, but growing up, my parents never told me I was beautiful. I never thought I was pretty.

Really?
I was always the smart, nerdy one. People put you in boxes, and that was my box. So it’s nice, but looks have never been something that I focused on or that people around me did. I liked being the nerdy one!