Emma Watson has not starred in a big budget movie for six years.
But the former Harry Potter star says she has not retired from acting and has a new project in the works – she just won’t reveal what it is.
Watson, 35, who became a star at age nine after she won a search to play the female heroine Hermione Granger in the franchise, has not been in a big budget film since she played Meg March in Little Women.
But she did hint she was making a comeback during a wide-ranging question and answer style interview with Hollywood Authentic.
In the same interview, conducted by her friend Hassan Akkad, Watson – who recently made a surprise appearance at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival – also revealed she had missed acting and divulged her main reason for taking a hiatus.
Watson was one of the biggest stars of her generation when she abruptly disappeared from Hollywood.
She told Hollywood Authentic that while she missed acting, she hated the process of ‘selling’ the work.
“In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual,” she said.
“But a bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art. The balance of that can get quite thrown off.
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“I think I’ll be honest and straight-forward, and say: I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying.
“But I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art. I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed.”
Watson said she loved “the moment you get on a film set… [and] get to talk through a scene” and getting to “prepare and think about how I wanted to do something”.
“And then the minute the lens rolls, and getting to just completely forget about everything else in the world other than that one moment,” she continued, describing acting as “an intense form of meditation”.
“It’s so freeing. I miss that profoundly,” she said.
“But I don’t miss the pressure. I forgot it was a lot of pressure.
“I did a small thing for a play, just with my friends. I was like, ‘Bloody hell, this is stressful!’ And that wasn’t even for a real public audience or anything. I don’t miss that.”
In the same interview, Watson said she had been “working really hard” but refused to divulge on what.
All the stars cast in the upcoming new Harry Potter series
“I’m not going to say what, because then people are like, ‘Well, when is it happening? What’s going on with this thing?’ So I’m just going to say that I’m working on something that I’ve never done before,” she said.
“So I feel a bit like a person who’s in the dark, stumbling around, looking for the edges of something, and hoping… it sounds like I’m trying to find a light switch.
“But it’s good. That’s the process. That’s the process of making things, isn’t it?”
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She also said she had been avoiding interviews as they did not align with her desire to be “living in the present moment”.
“I guess that is, as pretentious as it sounds, what I’m striving for at the moment. I want to speak more to a way that I’m being in the world, as opposed to what I’m producing.
“Because even once you’ve done whatever the thing is that they’ve managed to get out of you that you’re up to – then the minute you’ve told them that, it’s like, ‘Well, what about next? What are you going to do next?’
“It’s very difficult to be a person who’s living in the present moment in this kind of context.
“That’s the other thing I feel pressure around – that I don’t have a right to exist if I’m not being productive in a very specific way, or contributing in a very specific way.”
Watson also revealed she was “maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been” since stepping away from acting.
“I think what’s interesting about being an actor is, there’s a tendency to sort of fracture yourself into multiple personalities,” she said.
“I’m not just talking about the roles you play, but having the weight of a public persona, that sort of needs constant feeding and sprucing and glamorising.
“It’s very energy-intensive stuff.
“And shedding the multiple identities has freed up so much space, I think, for me to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then musician.
“And someone who’s trying to do some critical thinking of her own.”
As for her recent trip to Cannes, which got tongues wagging, Watson said she “just wanted to go and be in the room again with people who absolutely are completely, madly obsessed with film”.
“I just wanted to be part of the atmosphere, and also a part of the community. Because while I might not be making work right today, I still do feel that I’m part of a community, and I want to stay connected to that community, and be part of it.
“Getting to go and to actually just have the time – not to be trying to promote or sell something, but just to be able to have a conversation with someone, and to look at other people’s work [was] the goal.”
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