Harry Potter was a huge part of Emma Watson’s life when growing up. But the young and ambitious actor initially found adjusting to life outside of the film series harder than she might have imagined.
Emma Watson didn’t know her true self after portraying Hermione Granger for so long
Watson was only 9 years old when she was cast in the first Harry Potter movie The Sorcerer’s Stone. From there, she went on to portray the scholarly wizard Hermione Granger for the entirety of the Harry Potter series. But playing the character as passionately as Watson did sometimes came at the cost of her own identity.
In a 2015 interview with Porter (via Yahoo), the actor shared how being Hermione affected and perhaps stunted her own personal growth.
“[I’ve] spent more than half of my life pretending to be someone else,” Watson said. “While my contemporaries were dyeing their hair and figuring out who they were, I was figuring out who Hermione was and how best to portray her. Now at 25, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a sense of self that I’m comfortable with.”
Watson’s goal was to reconcile her public persona with her private persona so there wouldn’t be much of a big difference.
“I don’t want there to be a big separation between the public and the private person. It’s definitely the harder road to tread but without a doubt, ultimately the most rewarding,” she added. “It sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but I’m very interested in truth, in finding ways to be messy and unsure and flawed and incredible and great and my fullest self, all wrapped into one.”
Emma Watson had trouble functioning in the real world after ‘Harry Potter’ ended
Watson was used to Harry Potter taking up huge chunks of her life and experiences one year at a time. So by the time the film series wrapped, Watson found it hard to wrap her head around a life after Harry Potter. At times, it was even difficult.
“Doing the Potters was such a bubble and then having to figure out how to function in the real world has been a challenge,” she once told The Independent.
It was why Watson found successfully completing mundane chores a huge accomplishment when trying to live a normal life.
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“I know how to use a washing machine, I can cook. It’s worth it to me not to feel disconnected from everything, feeling like I’m in touch with people who do other things than acting or being in the entertainment industry,” she added.
Watson’s non-industry friends further helped the actor maintain her composure while dealing with parts of her celebrity lifestyle.
“I have school friends, a group of people around me, who have carried me through this whole experience and aren’t fazed if they ask, ‘Oh what are you doing tomorrow?’ and I say, ‘I’m going up to see Mario [Testino] in Notting Hill, he’s shooting me for the new Lancôme campaign.’ I don’t know – it is mad, and some days I feel a bit mad, but it’s the balance that keeps me sane. I don’t fully live it, this side of my life,” she said.
Emma Watson was jealous of other actors who didn’t grow up on-screen
Watson has many contemporaries in the industry around the same age with similar levels of fame. Actors like Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart know what it’s like to track an overwhelming amount of attention wherever they go. But Watson differs from her other young fellow actors since she grew up under the spotlight during childhood.
Meanwhile, stars like Lawrence and Stewart experienced their mega-stardom late in their adolescence or in their early 20s. And it was something Watson admitted she envied from time to time.
“There are all these actresses who have emerged in the last year or two, and they get to emerge as this complete human being. And I’m so jealous,” she said in an interview with Elle (via Los Angeles Times).
Still, the actor took measures to ensure that she didn’t have certain childhood experiences on the set of a movie.
“I remember reading this thing that Elizabeth Taylor wrote,” she said. “She had her first kiss in character. On a movie set. It really struck me. I don’t know how or why, but I had this sense that if I wasn’t really careful, that could be me: that my first kiss could be in somebody else’s clothes. And my experiences could all belong to someone else.”
