latest news

ELLE cover star: Emma Watson

By Emma Sells | Posted: 30 June 2009

A-list actress, Burberry model and now, university student. As Emma Watson prepares to leave behind the role that has dominated her life for a decade, she talks to ELLE about what the future holds…

On university:

‘It’s going to sound dramatic, but I feel like it’s going to be my life over as I know it. My whole life has been about Harry Potter and then all of that’s going to shut down and I don’t know what that will be like. I go to university in September – I’ll be doing bits and bobs at Christmas, but September feels like my cut off point, when I’ll really stop.’

On her money: ‘My dad never told me how much money I was earning. Then, when I hit 18, he was like, “I want you to be able to understand that your money isn’t some kind of abstract concept, I want you to have a feel for what it’s worth and what you can do with it.” The truth is that I’d just like to pretend it [the money] doesn’t exist.

‘It’s amazing how many children are aware from such a young age about money being something important or supposedly impressive. Around the age of 13/14, kids used to come up to me and say, “You the girl on Harry Potter? How much do you make?”’

On her image: ‘I don’t want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself. I want to avoid becoming too styled and too “done” and too generic. You see people as they go through their career and they just become more and more like everyone else. They start out with something individual about them but it gets lost. Natalie Portman is an exception. I’m in awe of how she’s handled herself.’

On the public perception: ‘I don’t think I am as black and white as [the media] likes to make me out. I’m not your classic public schoolgirl because I’ve been brought up here, in Watford. And I’ve met and worked with people from a million different backgrounds. Everyone’s going to think different things about me and I can’t control that. You can’t please everyone. And that’s something that I’m learning.’

On the future: ‘At the moment I feel like I need to go away and figure out what I want to do and be myself for a bit. I just want to take a step back from it and not rush into stuff. I need university to give me that break. People think because I’m going to university I’m never going to act again, but it’s actually me… I want to… figure out how I feel about everything first. Maybe I’ll keep acting, maybe I won’t. I just want to find something where I feel I have to do this. Maybe that’ll happen when I read a script. It felt like that with Hermione. I want to feel like that again.’

The full exclusive interview appears in this month’s issue of ELLE magazine, on sale tomorrow.