A SHORT STORY ABOUT EMMA WATSON

 

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Emma Watson was born on April 15, 1990, in Paris, France, but raised in England. The actress got her big break as a child with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, growing up on the screen as she reprised her role of Hermione Granger through the franchise's eight films. Watson went on to enjoy success in the fashion and modeling industries and continued to prove her abilities as an actress with roles in films like My Week with Marilyn, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Beauty and the Beast and Little Women.

 

EARLY LIFE:

Watson's parents, both British lawyers, are Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson. Her brother, Alex, was born three years later. Her parents divorced when Watson was 5, and she moved back to Oxfordshire in England with her mother and brother.

She attended the Stagecoach Theatre Arts School at Oxford. She studied singing, acting and dancing, and performed in school plays. Her instinct for acting first came out when she won a poetry competition for reciting James Reeves' "The Sea" at age 7.

Playing Hermione Granger in 'Harry Potter':

 Watson had never acted professionally when her theater teachers suggested her to agents looking to cast an upcoming movie based on the first novel of the best-selling Harry Potter series. A 9-year-old Watson auditioned eight times for the role that would make her an international star. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who was deeply involved in the film process to make sure it stayed true to the book, wanted her involved in the project.

She sufficiently impressed casting agents and the film's producers and won the role of Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's smart, bossy best friend and voice of reason. Harry Potter was portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint was cast as Ron Weasley, Harry's other best friend. The trio of British child actors would become known around the globe for their roles as young wizards fighting a battle between good and evil, beginning with the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in November 2001.

Watson's film debut was an enormous success: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone earned a record-breaking $33.3 million on its opening day in the United States, en route to grossing $975 million worldwide. It was nominated for three Academy Awards and seven BAFTA Awards, with Watson receiving critical praise to cement her status as an up-and-coming star.

For the next decade, she stayed busy filming the Potter series. She reprised the role of Hermione for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2004 and continued to star in the eight-part series through the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, in 2011.

Although they spent their adolescence on film sets, Watson and Co-stars Radcliffe and Grint kept up with their lessons, with five hours of tutoring each day. She took high school equivalency exams and made high scores in every subject. She took a year off from school to film the final two Harry Potter movies but maintained that she was committed to furthering her education.

She tried hard to shed her child star image, one so closely tied to the Potter franchise. “I have lived in a complete bubble. They found me and picked me for the part. And now I’m desperately trying to find my way through it,” she said in an interview with Vogue in 2011.

 

FASHION AND EDUCATION:

As a teenager coming of age as an established movie star, Watson also emerged as a fashionista, her style catching the eye of many major figures in the fashion industry. "I love fashion. I think it's so important because it's how you show yourself to the world," she once told Teen Vogue.

Maintaining her commitment to her education, she enrolled as a freshman at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 2009. Watson claimed she chose an American university over a British education because the American system allows students to study many subjects at once. Brown was also a place, she said, where she could more easily blend in. “I want to be normal,” she said. "I really want anonymity."

In September 2009 Watson announced that she was working with People Tree, a fashion label that promotes fair trade. She catapulted into the world of high fashion and modeling when she was chosen as the face of Burberry's Autumn/Winter 2009 collection, and again for the 2010 Spring/Summer collection.

Watson took fans by surprise when she chopped off her long locks and debuted a pixie haircut in August 2010. The new 'do help her shed the child star image of her Potter days.

In March 2011 she revealed that she was deferring her schooling to work on the Potter finale. In July she announced plans to return to Brown for a year to complete her degree after studying at Oxford University in the fall. The next month, she starred in a commercial for Lancôme perfume.

 She graduated from Brown in 2014 with an English degree. That same year, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador.

 

FILMS:

Watson also appeared in the 2007 television adaptation of the novel Ballet Shoes and lent her voice to The Tale of Despereaux (2008). After the last Harry Potter film, she took on starring and supporting roles in My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) and The Bling Ring (2013), made an appearance as an exaggerated version of herself in This Is the End (2013) and played the title character's adopted daughter in Noah (2014).

 She starred as Belle in the 2017 musical romantic fantasy Beauty and the Beast (2017) directed by Bill Condon and starring opposite Dan Stevens as the Beast. The film earned over $1.2 billion at the box office and emerged as the second highest-grossing film of 2017, behind only Star Wars:

In 2019, Watson starred as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, and Meryl Streep.

 Her other film roles include Regression (2015), Colonia (2015), and The Circle (2017).

EMMA WATSON'S AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS:

Emma Watson has won numerous awards for her acting and filming. Along with her education, she started working in the filming industry and remained nominated and winner of several awards and achievements.

Watson got Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actress in 2002 and also remained nominated for Best Young Actor & Best Debut award for her film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Emma remained nominated for Critic Choice Awards for “Best Young Actress” for her film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2005.

She won the "National Movie Award" for "Best Performance by a Female" for the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

In 2011, she got a Capri Art Film Festival Award for “Best Ensemble Cast” for My Week with Marilyn. She got an MTV Movie Award for Choice Movie: Actress Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Emma also got the People's Choice Award for Favorite Ensemble Movie Cast for the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2.

In 2013, she won the MTV Movie Award for Best Cast for the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She got the People's Choice Award for Favourite Drama Movie Actress.

In 2014, she won several awards for her film “Beauty and the Beast” including Teen Choice Award, Britannia Award, British Fashion Award, etc.

In 2017, she also won several awards for the film “The Circle”. These awards include the Teen Choice Awards.

 

FEMINISM :

At a very young age, Emma Watson became something of a feminist icon practically by default when she was cast as the brilliant, inspiring Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. In the years since hanging up her wand, however, she has joined the fight for gender equality in a more deliberate way.

The actress, seen as Meg March in Greta Gerwig’s star-studded adaptation of Little Women — an early feminist text in itself — has intentionally taken on empowering roles and promoted feminist literature. In July of 2014, she has appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for U.N. Women; that September, she delivered a rousing speech at the U.N. Headquarters launching the HeForShe campaign, the aim of which is to bring more men into the feminist fold, because gender equality benefits everybody.

 The actress said in her U.N. speech, "I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights”, “No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.”

At the heart of HeForShe is the notion that to give women the same rights, respect, and opportunities afforded to men would not be detrimental to men; rather, the removal of the extremist social expectations that come with gender inequality would be freeing and beneficial to everyone.

“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong.”

In 2016, she gave an interview in Esquire U.K. where she spoke more about the importance of feminism for men as well as women:

"[Feminism]'s not about us convincing you that gender equality is worth engaging in only because there might be something in it for you, or is it for your sister or your mother. The question is, what's in it for humans?" she told the magazine. "Happier, healthier, more successful children? Being able to take proper paternity leave and see your baby? Being able to talk to someone if you're feeling bad? Actually, getting to be yourself? Getting asked out by a woman?  A marriage that is a true partnership? More diverse and interesting perspectives in art, culture, business, and politics? Getting to crowdsource all the innovation and genius in the world, not just half of it? A highly increased number of safe, confident, and fulfilled people on the planet, particularly women? World peace? Seriously. World peace!"

Credits:

Script Credit: Er. Ms. Neprositha