Emma Watson hasn’t acted in a movie since 2018’s Oscar-winning Little Women, and to the Financial Times, the Harry Potter franchise veteran revealed why.
“I wasn’t very happy, if I’m being honest,” says Watson, in a feature about her family’s endeavors in the wine and spirits industry. “I think I felt a bit caged.”
She adds, “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 … It was very difficult to have to be … the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”
Watson explains, “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.'”
To that end, she’s making the foray into directing, cutting her teeth on a campaign for Prada and a music video for a famous star she won’t reveal. “People always told me I should direct and produce, even when I was on Potter,” she says. “Being a director seemed unattainable. I don’t think I had any confidence in that. I know it seems weird. I mean, I grew up on a film set.”
Watson revealed she is returning to school in September to get a master’s in creative writing at Oxford University. That said, she’s not closing the door on being in front of the camera.
“But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing,” she says. “I love what I do. It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to … switch into robot mode anymore.”
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