Emma's 'voices.

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=1078611

Emma Watson has a lot on her mind right now. There's her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter series; her boyfriend, who is not either of her Potter co-stars, Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint; and her new role as the face of Chanel perfume Coco Mademoiselle, replacing fellow English lass Keira Knightley.


On top of all that is her latest effort as the voice of the princess in The Tale of Despereaux, which is the animated movie version of the best-selling Kate DiCamillo book.



Opening on Friday, the film fantasy deals with a mouse (Matthew Broderick) who ignores his upbringing and tries to communicate with a princess (Watson) mourning the loss of her mother. That leads to consequences and some quirky action.



For Watson, the assignment was a little complicated. She did the voice recordings while filming last year's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so she sometimes struggled to make sure her Hermione persona didn't surface in the princess's voice.



"I would get paranoid, especially about the voice specifics, where I'd hear something and think, ‘Gosh, do I sound like Hermione there?' " notes the 18-year-old. "After all, Hermione is distinctive and she is so much a part of me. But I think it worked out OK."


Certainly, there are differences between working on a cartoon such as the Despereaux fairy tale and the live-action fantasy Potter films.


"What they do have in common, though, is the magical feeling and the fact that both are based on books," she says. "But they have very different messages and different ways of getting their points of view across."



Her most difficult princess challenge, Watson says, was to elevate the personality beyond the "generic form we're all accustomed to."



That meant doing multiple takes, sometimes repeating even single words in an attempt to capture the essence of what the filmmakers wanted. She says the process was a valuable acting exercise.



"I had to make sure she sounded as she was [feeling], which happened to be lonely and isolated and not really a part of the world," Watson says. "Mostly I felt very sad for her, but I made sure she seemed to come alive when she had the conversations with Despereaux, which I believe turned out very charming."



Meanwhile, there are the continuing Potter film adventures. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is expected to open July 17 to a great deal of anticipation, while J.K. Rowling's last novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will reveal itself in separate films, the first part arriving in 2010, followed by the conclusion to the movie series in 2011.



The first part of Deathly Hallows is scheduled to start shooting early next year, but Watson deflects any conversation of what fans might anticipate. "Yes, we begin on the seventh one in February," she says of the Deathly Hallows two-parter. "And then the sixth one [Half-Blood Prince] will be released in July."


Other than that, she will only confirm that the Potter cast and crew will be filming both instalments of Deathly Hallows for at least 12 months.


So is the actress sad to see the Potter pictures coming to an end? She's grown up with the films since 2001's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.


"We're a long way off," Watson says, "so it's too early to talk about it or get nostalgic."