Elle UK interview. 2

I arrive at Leavesden Studio near Warford in Hertfordshire at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. Home to the Harry Potter cast and crew for 10 years now, it’s an old aerodrome (??) that houses the film’s impressive sets but looks - and an closer inspection is – entirely devoid of glamour. Emma has recently moved out of her mother’s house in Oxford and into a Hampstead flathouse(?), so she’s now only a 30-minute drive away. Filming on the final two movies of the series (the seventh book is being split into two screenplays) is well underway; leaving her working six days a week for the forcenable (?); so the mountain has come to Mo……(?). I’m sitting in the canteen when, suddenly; she’s here, hovering over me and grinning shyly.
In the flesh, she’s aristocratically beautiful. Willowy thin with perfect, youthful skin naturally flushed, and those to-die-for strong slanted eyebrows. Her youth is …….(??) by her clothes; fresh from a morning of filming (it’s the Totherham Court Road café scene today) she’s head-to-toe in Hermione-wear – brown cords, a fitted tee and a zip-up sweatshirt. For many; Emma Watson is Hermione Granger and Hermione Granger is Emma Watson. The lines are so blurred as to have become non-existent. The whole world sees Emma Watson as a well-brought-up schoolgirl, JK Rowling’s magical novels have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide; the series of film adaptations will, with this month’s release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, claim from James Bond its place as the highest-growing film series ever made. Before she even took her driving test, Emma was an action figure, and featured on poster, stickers, Photoshopped Youtubes video (hahahhahah), Top Trump card games and even a Lego character. It’s the kind of success nine-years old Emma auditioning for the part at her Oxford school, could not have imagined, but it’s also the kind of success that, at 19, makes you all too aware that this might be as good as it gets.
For the moment, then, university is the focus “I’m so excited, Living in London, it’s hard to be anonymous. But hopefully on some campus somewhere, I’ll fade into the background a bit” she says. The relative anonymity of America is clearly a draw “I’m very aware that with Cambridge, people would find that interesting Cambridge it so high profile in itself and then on top of that, people don’t really go out in Cambridge because it’s so small, so I’ll be going out in London and then that’s just the same thing I definitely am attracted to the State for that reason”.
For Emma, university means leaving behind two families-her parents, brother and sisters, and the people here in Wartford, with whom she’s spent more than half her life. “It’s going to sound dramatic, but I feel like its going to be my life over as I know it. My whole life has been about Harry Potter and then all of that will shut down and I don’t know what it will be like. I go to university in September- I’ll be going bit and bobs (??) at Christmas, but September feels like my cut-off point, the moment when I’ll really stop”
While her privacy may have been curtailed (??), the Harry Potter legacy undoubtedly has its benefits. On her 18th birthday last April, Emma took control of an estimated £ 10 million. Rather than celebrate her fortune with a spending spree, she took a course at exclusive bank Coutts on how to manage her millions. “My dad never told me how much money I was earning. Then when I hit 18, he was like, ‘I want you to have a feel for what it’s worth and what you can do with it.’ The course was interesting I’m glad I did it, but the truth is I’d just like to pretend that it [the money] doesn’t exit. It’s amazing how many children are aware from such a young age about money being important or supposedly impressive. Around the age of 13 or 14, kids used to come up to me and say; ‘You the girl on Harry Potter? How much do you make?’”
So is she spending any of it? On clothes, perhaps? “I’m really interested in Fairtrade fashion and organic cotton, but it’s hard because, to be honest, the stuff’s kind of ugly or really plain. I’m actually quite a tomboy, I love a blazer with jeans and some pumps. I like that French kind of simple style, like Agnes B and I love black tights. Anything with black tights is good. I went to Uniglo for the first time recently and that was great, so cool.”
No outlandish splurges, then? An impractical sports car or a wardrobe stocked with strong shoulder Balmain? “I really don’t have time to spend my money. Sometimes my bank manager calls me to say: ‘You haven’t used your card in a while and now you’re using it- no one’s stolen it, have they?’ I’ll happily fork out money for a nice meal, though. I’m a big food fan, I eat healthy but when I’m tired I want Pizza Hut or McDonald’s. When I get back in the evening, my flatmate and I are so knackered that we can’t be bothered to make anything to eat, so I’ll have toast for dinner.”
If that all sound a little bit too normal, not at all like the life of an increasingly A-list actress, that pretty much sums up the very unstarry Miss Watson. A night in at Emma’s place sounds much like our own. “I’m obsessed with Gossip Girl. It’s so wrong that Nate and Blair are getting back together. Blair is definitely the more interesting character. If I were going to play either of them [Blair or Serena], I would play Blair. I love watching America’s Next Top Model too. My flatmate, Sophie, is in the British version of the series- it make it extra tame(?). My other guilty pleasure is Twilight (noooooooo Emma noooooooo), I love those books. My friend and I read them back to back. This is so sad, but I literally felt depressed when I finished reading them because I thought, “Oh my God, what am I going to do now?”
When it comes to partying this 19 years old is certainly not of the ilk that stumbles drunkenly into the eager lenses of waiting paparazzi, stockings laddered, eyeliner smuggled (?), only too eager to spill the proverbial beam on no-hold-barred blogs. “The best nights out I’ve had have been at Cheesy nightclubs in Oxford,” she smiles. “As soon as I’m going out, it’s like a bomb has exploded in my room. I’ve got clothes, make-up, my straightener…I love sharing clothes with my flatmate and getting ready together. If I hadn’t been an actress I would have happily been a make-up artist. I love make-up. Being around make-up girls all the time you pick up loads of stuff- I’ll go down there at lunch and use some of their products. I love doing up my flatmate before she’s goes out, like a Girl’s World.”