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.

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born on 15 April 1990 in Paris, to English lawyers Chris Watson and Jacqueline Luesby.

Watson lived in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris until age five.

Her parents divorced when she was young, 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.

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, and producers were impressed by her confidence.

After eight auditions, producer David Heyman told Watson and fellow applicants Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint that they had been cast in the roles of the school friends Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, respectively.

Rowling supported Watson from her first screen test.

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.

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.

Watson made her first major forays beyond the Potter franchise starring in Ballet Shoes (2007), and lent her voice to The Tale of Despereaux (2008).

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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".

On 25 May 2014, she graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.

In 2023, she began a masters course in creative writing at Oxford University.

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.

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.

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).

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.

In 2020, she joined the board of directors of Kering, a luxury brand group, in her capacity as an advocate for sustainable fashion.