Emma Watson has opened up about her seven-year absence from acting and the early pressures of fame.
The Harry Potter star, 35, has not appeared in a production since December 2018 when she appeared in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women adaptation.
After turning down a string of roles, including a live-action version of Cinderella, Emma has been open about shifting her focus to activism.
She has also launched a wine-inspired gin, named Renais, and enrolled herself for a masters degree in creative writing at Oxford University.
Now, however, in a new interview with Hollywood Authentic the star – who made her acting debut in 1999 with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the age of 11 – has revealed how she ‘misses using her skillset’ in acting.
‘The bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art,’ she explained.
‘The balance of that can get quite thrown off. I think I’ll be honest and straight-forward, and say: I do not miss selling things.
‘I found that to be quite soul-destroying. But I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art. I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed.’
Emma continued by saying how when the camera rolls you are able to ‘forget about everything else in the world other than that one moment’.
Describing acting as ‘an intense form of meditation’, she also said she profoundly missed how ‘freeing’ acting is.
‘I forgot it was a lot of pressure. I did a small thing for a play, just with my friends. I was like, “Bloody hell, this is stressful!” And that wasn’t even for a real public audience or anything. I don’t miss that,’ she added.
Asked about the perspective she keeps on life, she said: ‘The most important thing, really – or the foundation of your life – is your home and friends and family. I think I worked so hard for so long that my life sort of bottomed out.
‘The bottom fell out of the piece, which was actually me and my life. So I needed to go and do some construction work. Some good foundations for anything else to grow from.
‘Because if you don’t have that, there’s a kind of mania that ensues; a kind of panic where you move from one project to the next, kind of terrified of the void in between them. You realize you don’t have a rhythm to your life.’
Previously, Watson told Financial Times in an interview two years ago that she felt ‘caged in’ by her acting profession.
Outside of Harry Potter and Little Women, Emma is known for Noah, The Bling Ring, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Beauty and the Beast.
In July earlier this year, she was banned from driving for six months at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court after going 38mph in a 30mph zone.
She was caught speeding in Banbury, Oxford, on July 31 last year and is said to have had nine points on her licence at the time.
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