Emma Watson doesn't know who she is. A funny conundrum for an international acting icon, but quite understandable, too. The magic of Hollywood sometimes makes identities disappear. Especially for wizards.
The "Harry Potter" star, now 21 and on the precipice of leaving behind the epic series that launched her to fame, admits that she's very much like her character, the brainy, neurotic and loyal Hermoine. But shedding that role means getting to expand, spread her wings, find out what else she can be.
“Hermione is so close to who I am as a person that I’ve never really had to research a role,” Watson told Vogue Magazine for their new cover story. “I’m literally rediscovering what it means to be an actress.”
Not just an actress, but a person. She's now making decisions for herself, modeling and designing and picking new roles. And while she says that she was a pain in "Potter" studio Warner Bros. butts with her requests built to give her a chance to go to college, she's only now fully independent.
“I have had no control over my life,” she told the magazine. “I have lived in a complete bubble. They found me and picked me for the part. And now I’m desperately trying to find my way through it.”
That being said, she's not obstinant or difficult; in fact, becoming herself involves accepting what she's been.
"I was in denial," she told the Sunday Times Style Magazine last week about her brief retreat into the anonymity of college life. "I wanted to pretend I wasn't as famous as I was. I was trying to seek out normality, but I kind of have to accept who I am, the position I'm in and what happened."
Her next role, which she pursued immediately after reading the script, will be in Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." It's a role far from who she is, which allows her a chance to find out what else she can be as an actress. And a regular girl, with problems involving regular guys. Of course, she's got a wizard to help her cast those charm spells.
Co-star Daniel Radcliffe told Vogue that he and Watson are, “very much like brother and sister, and when one or the other of us was having a tricky moment in our lives, it was often that we would confide in each other. We would also help each other with relationship advice; particularly funny were the moments when we would help each other compose texts to the most recent flames in either of our lives (not too flirty, but not too subtle either!). It was certainly a case of the blind leading the blind, but it was extremely funny.”
As she goes forward, "blind" Emma Watson looks like she's finally got her eyes wide open.
For more, click over to Vogue.
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