Emma Watson

The English actress who became Hermione Granger with no professional experience beyond school plays.

Emma Watson, born 15 April 1990, is an English actress who rose to stardom as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, her first professional role after only school plays. In the 2010s Forbes and Vanity Fair ranked her among the world's highest-paid actresses, and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2015.

She was born in Paris to English lawyers and moved to Oxfordshire at five after her parents divorced, attending the Dragon School and training at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts.

Quick Facts

Birth name: Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson
Born: 15 April 1990
Birthplace: Paris, France
Education: Brown University (BA)
Occupation: Actress
Years active: 1999–present

Facts from the source article.

Background

On set she and her castmates were tutored for up to five hours a day, and in 2006 she took GCSEs in ten subjects, getting eight A and two A grades. From 2011 to 2014 she split her time between films and Brown University, graduating in English literature in May 2014.

Beyond Potter she starred in Ballet Shoes, voiced a role in The Tale of Despereaux, and won acclaim as Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Alexis Neiers in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring and in Darren Aronofsky's Noah. She was BAFTA's British Artist of the Year in 2014, played Belle in Beauty and the Beast in 2017 and Meg March in Greta Gerwig's Little Women in 2019.

Watson became a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in 2014 and helped launch the HeForShe campaign for gender equality, co-founded Time's Up UK in 2018 and sat on the board of the luxury group Kering from 2020 to 2023 as an advocate for sustainable fashion.