The gap on Emma Watson’s IMDB page is no accident. The Harry Potter alum said recently she was fed up with acting because of her lack of control over the finished product.
Emma hasn’t had movie credits since the Oscar-nominated Little Women in 2019, and she has no gigs on the horizon, according to the entertainment website.
“I wasn’t very happy if I’m being honest,” she told the Financial Times. “I think I felt a bit caged. 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.”
Her grievance was compounded by the duties of publicising her work.
“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,” she said.
“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. And I started to realise 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’.”
Amid a career that has included The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and Beauty And The Beast, Emma said she would “absolutely” return to the craft that made her world-famous.
“But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing,” she told FT. “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 anymore. Does that make sense?”
In the meantime, Emma is launching Renais Gin with her brother Alex and honing her writing and directing skills.
She used both in creating an ad for Prada last winter. And she’s been asked to direct a music video for a prominent performer. But she’s staying mum on who it is.
“People always told me I should direct and produce,” she said. “Even when I was on Potter.”