biography of Emma Watson

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson : 

(born 15 April 1990) is an English actress. Known for her roles in both blockbusters and independent films, she has received a selection of accolades, including a Young Artist Award and three MTV Movie Awards. Watson has been ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses by Forbes and Vanity Fair, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015.^[1][2][3] Watson was also listed by Forbes as an honouree on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2015 and 2016 

Watson attended the Dragon School and trained in acting at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts. As a child, she rose to stardom after landing her first professional acting role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, having previously acted only in school plays. Watson made her first major foray beyond the Potter franchise starring in Ballet Shoes (2007), and she lent her voice to The Tale of Despereaux (2008). After the final Harry Potter film, she took on a supporting role in My Week with Marilyn (2011), before starring as Sam, a flirtatious, free-spirited student in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), to critical success. Further acclaim came from portraying Alexis Neiers in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013) and the titular character's adoptive daughter in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah (2014). That same year, Watson was honoured by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, winning British Artist of the Year. She also starred as Belle in the live-action musical romantic fantasy Beauty and the Beast (2017), and as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age drama Little Women (2019).

From 2011 to 2014, Watson split her time between working on films and continuing her education, graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in English literature in May 2014. That year, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which advocates for gender equality. In 2018, she helped launch Time's Up UK as a founding member. Watson was appointed to a G7 advisory body for women's rights in 2019, consulting with leaders on foreign policy. Her modelling work has included campaigns for Burberry and Lancôme. She also lent her name to a clothing line for the sustainable brand People Tree. From 2020 to 2023, she sat on the board of directors of Kering, a luxury brand group, in her capacity as an advocate for sustainable fashion.

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born on 15 April 1990 in Paris, to English lawyers Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson. Watson lived in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris until age five. Her parents divorced when she was five, and Watson moved to England to live with her mother in Oxfordshire while spending weekends at her father's house in London.  Watson has said she speaks some French, though "not as well" as she used to. After moving to Oxford with her mother and brother, she attended the Dragon School, remaining there until 2003. From age six, she wanted to become an actress, and trained at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts, a part-time theatre school where she studied singing, dancing, and acting.

By age ten, Watson had performed in Stagecoach productions and school plays including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince, but she had never acted professionally prior to the Harry Potter series. After the Dragon School, Watson moved on to Headington School, Oxford. While on film sets, she and her castmates were tutored for up to five hours a day.  In June 2006, she took GCSE school examinations in ten subjects, achieving eight A* and two A grades. In May 2007, she took AS levels in English, Geography, Art, and History of Art. The following year, she dropped History of Art to pursue the three A levels, receiving an A grade in each subject. 

Watson took a gap year after finishing secondary school, to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Parts 1 & 2 beginning in February 2009  but asserted that she intended to continue her studies  and later confirmed she had chosen Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island In March 2011, after 18 months at the university, Watson announced she was deferring her course for "a semester or two",  though she attended Worcester College, Oxford during the 2011–12 academic year as part of the Visiting Student Programme. In a 2014 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Watson said just before graduation that it took five years to finish her degree instead of four because, owing to her acting work, she "ended up taking two full semesters off".^[26] On 25 May 2014, she graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. In 2023, she began a course of Master of Studies in creative writing at the University of Oxford, where she matriculated at Lady Margaret Hall. 

In 1999, casting began for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the film adaptation of British author J. K. Rowling's best-selling novel.  Casting agents found Watson through her Oxford theatre teacher. She had acted in school plays, but had no film acting experience. Her first audition took place when she was nine years old. Although Watson had to audition a total of eight times before earning the role, Rowling supported her casting after her first screen test. Prior to casting Watson, the producers considered Hatty Jones for the role. 

The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001 was Watson's debut screen performance. The film broke records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings and was the highest-grossing film of 2001.  Critics singled out Watson for particular acclaim; The Daily Telegraph called her performance "admirable", and IGN said she "stole the show". Watson was nominated for five awards for her performance in Philosopher's Stone, winning the Young Artist Award for Leading Young Actress. She was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Breakout Performers of 2001. 

 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second installment of the series. Reviewers praised the lead actors' performances. The Los Angeles Times said Watson and her co-stars had matured between films,  while The Times criticised director Chris Columbus for "under-employing" Watson's hugely popular character.^[41] Watson received an Otto Award from the German magazine Bravo for her performance. 

In 2004, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released. Watson was appreciative of the more assertive role Hermione played, calling her "charismatic" and "a fantastic role to play".^[43] Critics lauded Watson's performance; A. O. Scott of The New York Times remarked: "Luckily Mr. Radcliffe's blandness is offset by Ms. Watson's spiky impatience. Harry may show off his expanding wizardly skills ... but Hermione ... earns the loudest applause with a decidedly unmagical punch to Draco Malfoy's deserving nose." Although Prisoner of Azkaban proved to be the lowest-grossing Harry Potter film in the entire series, Watson's performance won her two Otto Awards and the Child Performance of the Year award from Total Film. 

With Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), both Watson and the Harry Potter film series reached new milestones. The film set records for a Harry Potter opening weekend and opening weekend in the UK. Critics praised the increasing maturity of Watson and her teenage co-stars; The New York Times called her performance "touchingly earnest", and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that "Watson's gutsy, confident performance nicely shows that inside and outside the world of magic there is a growing discrepancy between a teenage girl's status and her accelerating emotional and intellectual development." For Watson, much of the film's humour sprang from the tension among the three lead characters as they matured. She said, "I loved all the arguing. ... I think it's much more realistic that they would argue and that there would be problems."  Nominated for three awards for Goblet of Fire, Watson won a bronze Otto Award.  Watson almost quit the franchise after Goblet of Fire, saying, "I think I was scared. I don’t know if you ever felt like it got to a tipping point where you were like, 'this is kind of forever now.' 

In 2006, Watson played Hermione in The Queen's Handbag, a special mini-episode of Harry Potter in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday.  The fifth film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released in 2007. A huge financial success, the film set a record worldwide opening-weekend gross of $332.7 million. Watson won the inaugural National Movie Award for Best Female Performance.  As the fame of the actress and the series continued to rise, Watson and her Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on 9 July 2007. That month, Watson's work on the Harry Potter series was said to have earned her more than £10 million, and she acknowledged she would never have to work for money again. 

Prior to the release of Order of the Phoenix, the future of the Harry Potter series was in jeopardy, as all three lead actors were hesitant to sign on to continue their roles for the final installments. Watson was considerably more ambivalent than her co-stars during renegotiations.  She explained that the decision was significant, as the films represented a further four-year commitment to the role, but eventually conceded that she "could never let [the role of] Hermione go", signing for the role on 23 March 2007. 

Watson's first non-Potter role was the 2007 BBC film Ballet Shoes, a television adaptation of the 1936 novel of the same name by Noel Streatfeild. The film's director, Sandra Goldbacher, commented that Watson was "perfect" for the starring role of aspiring actress Pauline Fossil: "She has a piercing, delicate aura that makes you want to gaze and gaze at her."^[64] Ballet Shoes was broadcast in the UK on Boxing Day to 5.7 million viewers, to mixed reviews.^[65][66][67] The following year, she voiced the character Princess Pea in the animation The Tale of Despereaux, a children's comedy, based on the 2003 novel of the same name, by Kate DiCamillo, starring Matthew Broderick, with Harry Potter co-star Robbie Coltrane also starring in the film.  The Tale of Despereaux was released in December 2008 and grossed $87 million worldwide.

Principal photography for the sixth Harry Potter film began in late 2007, with Watson's part being filmed from 18 December to 17 May 2008.^[70][71] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premiered on 15 July 2009,  having been delayed from November 2008. With the lead actors in their late teens, critics were increasingly willing to review them on the same level as the rest of the franchise's all-star cast, which the Los Angeles Times described as "a comprehensive guide to contemporary UK acting".^[74] The Washington Post felt Watson had given "[her] most charming performance to date",  while The Daily Telegraph described the lead actors as "newly liberated and energised, eager to give all they have to what's left of the series". 

Watson's filming for the final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, began on 18 February 2009 and ended on 12 June 2010.  For financial and scripting reasons, the original book was divided into two films which were shot consecutively. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 was released in November 2010 while the second film was released in July 2011. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 became a commercial and critical success. The highest-grossing film in the franchise, it grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide and proved to be Watson's most commercially successful film to date. 

Watson appeared in a music video for One Night Only, after meeting lead singer George Craig at the 2010 Winter/Summer Burberry advertising campaign. The video, "Say You Don't Want It", was screened on Channel 4 on 26 June 2010 and released on 16 August.  In her first post-Harry Potter film, Watson appeared in My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Lucy, a wardrobe assistant who briefly dates protagonist Colin Clark, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne. 

In May 2010, Watson was reported to be in talks to star in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower,  based on the 1999 novel of the same name. Filming began in summer of 2011, and the film was released in September 2012.  Watson starred opposite Logan Lerman as Sam, a high school senior who befriends a fellow student called Charlie (Lerman), and helps him through his freshman year. The film opened to favourable reviews; David Sexton of the Evening Standard opined that Watson's performance was "plausible and touching", while The Atlantic reviewer thought that Watson "sheds the memory of a decade playing Hermione in the Harry Potter series with an about-face as a flirtatious but insecure free spirit. 

Watson joined the cast of the satirical crime film The Bling Ring on 29 February 2012, The Sofia Coppola-directed film is based on the real-life Bling Ring robberies, with Watson playing a fictionalised version of Alexis Neiers, a television personality who was one of seven teenagers involved in the robberies. The film was released in 2013. While the film mostly received mixed reviews, critics gave almost unanimous praise for Watson's performance. Adam White of The Independent later stated that "She prove[d] remarkable.... Watson oozes casual disdain. Her sticky American vocal fry is clipped and monotone, as if she's swallowed a Kardashian for breakfast."  Watson also had a supporting role in the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End (2013), in which she, Seth Rogen, James Franco and many others played "exaggerated versions of themselves" and Watson memorably dropped the "f-bomb". She said she could not pass up the opportunity to make her first comedy and "work with some of the best comedians [...] in the world right now". 

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