Emma Watson on taking a break from acting: “I felt a bit caged”

Emma Watson in a scene from ‘Little Women.’
| Photo Credit: AP

Emma Watson’s last performance was in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. The actor who shot to fame after playing the role of Hermoine Granger in the ‘Harry Potter’ series, is on an acting hiatus. In an interview with Financial Times, she revealed that she “was not very happy” with the profession and noted that she “felt a bit caged”. Currently, the actor is not a part of any film or television projects.

“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. 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 added.

“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 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,’” she said.

The actor hopes to return to acting, “But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing. 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 any more. Does that make sense?,” she added.

Watson has featured in movies like Noah, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Beauty and the Beast.