Harry Potter actor Emma Watson on her 5-year break from acting: ‘I felt a bit caged’

During a recent interview, Emma Watson was asked about the reason behind her prolonged hiatus from acting. She revealed that she "wasn't very happy" with the profession.

By: ANI

Washington | May 3, 2023 02:19 PM IST

3 min read

Emma Watson's look from Little Woman film. (Photo: emmawatson/Instagram)

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Emma Watson hasn’t acted since December 2018, when she wrapped production of Greta Gerwig’s beloved Little Women adaptation. Considering the Harry Potter actor’s break from acting would touch five years at the end of 2023, she was asked about the reason for her staying away from the camera. In a recent interview, she said that she “wasn’t very happy” with the profession, reported Variety.

“I think I felt a bit caged,” Watson said. “The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over. To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’ It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”

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She added, “I was held accountable in a way that I began to find really frustrating, because I didn’t have a voice, I didn’t have a say.” Emma added, “And I started to realize that I only wanted to stand in front of things where if someone was going to give me flak about it, I could say, in a way that didn’t make me hate myself, ‘Yes, I screwed up, it was my decision, I should have done better.'”

Watson, whose acting career includes eight Harry Potter movies along with Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Bling Ring, Beauty and the Beast and more, starred as Meg March in Gerwig’s Little Women, which remains her most recent acting role to date. Little Women earned six Oscar nominations, including best picture.

Would Watson return to acting?

According to Variety, Emma said, “Yes, absolutely.” “But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing. I love what I do. It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don’t want to switch into robot mode any more. Does that make sense?” she concluded.

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