Emma Watson: “I want to be one of many”

There lived a girl in England. Know-it-all and wunderkind. A beauty and a genius of discipline. So talented that when she was ten, she was accepted into the most prestigious educational institution – Hogwarts School of Wizards … And in another England, a girl also lived. Very pretty, very intelligent, very organized, very purposeful. So gifted that she, out of thousands of applicants, was chosen for the role of Hermione Granger in the epic film about the young wizard …

Pass the tests

• What do men think about your appearance?

“That’s because I really was her,” Emma Watson says sixteen years later. — With her perfectionism, penchant for teaching and self-righteousness. But who would have thought that I would become her literally and for so many years? And who could have known what it would lead to? We are sitting in a shabby Mexican restaurant in London’s Camden. There are no molecular recipes, elegant waiters, an audience with Hermès bags and Breguet watches. We eat chicken fajitas, but they seem to have more pepper than chicken. And Emma likes the unpretentiousness of the kitchen, and the gloomy Spaniard bartender, and even the appearance at our table of a 12-year-old boy and his sister with a notebook and a pen, because it is known that Emma never refuses autographs to children. “Here is a gentle autograph mode,” smiles Emma. “That’s why I go here and fly low-cost airlines – no one pays attention to you on board EasyJet, because you are unlikely here.” Emma is also “unlikely” dressed: exquisite Lanvin low shoes merrily side by side with elastic knee-highs and masterpieces from the Los Angeles flea market – a black floral skirt and a yellow mohair sweater. That is, she is dressed and behaves like yesterday’s student, who, in fact, she is – she recently graduated from Brown University from the most prestigious American Ivy League with a degree in English Philology … She understands the course of my thoughts, grunts with a pointed nose in freckles and notices with with his amazing ironic shyness: “Yes, jalapenos are a bit much, I agree. But at least I showed you the dichotomy of my existence.” So Emma Watson fell into the trap of her philological causticity by dictating the main question to me.

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• Can perfectionism be healthy?

Psychologies: So, after all, you live not one life, but two. You are not who you say you are, who we see in you …

Emma Watson: You know, people in ordinary everyday situations most often, looking at me, utter the same phrase: “Is that you?! The girl from Harry Potter?! You come to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist says this to you. And believe me, now I finally found how to respond with dignity: yes, I say, I came here for the gaskets. I could, of course, say that I flew on a broom for gaskets. But I’m not kidding. Because the pathos communicated to my person by participation in the most successful franchise in the universe must be reduced. About five years ago, for the first and only time, I seriously took offense at a journalist – not at the paparazzi or the misinterpreter of my words from the tabloid – I do not take offense at them. On Will Self, a real journalist, even a writer. If only he had applied his talent as a satirist to me! So no – after the interview, he wrote that yes, a good girl, sober-minded. But everything that happened to me, according to Self, just fell from the sky, just happened, like a downpour happens. It’s like my life is separate from me, like I’m a random character in my own life. I’m offended. But there was something in it. Confirmation of my main fear: that I will not live my fate …

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• Why do we read Harry Potter books?

…And the one forced on you by “Potter”?

E.W.: That’s it. Look, I was so naive! How did I live until I was eighteen? Tough discipline, work on eight – eight! – films that were released one after another without pauses. We lived in a kind of strange bubble – mostly at the Leavesden studios, in a former airship hangar an hour from London. In the morning, a car would pick me up and take me to the studio or to school, and then to a dance lesson, or a fencing lesson, or yoga, or gymnastics, or a vocal teacher, or a stage speech teacher, or a horse riding coach . And in the evening I brought it home. I didn’t even know what I wanted to be. Perhaps an actress, but not primarily. Dan and Rupert (actors Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, Watson’s peers and colleagues in Harry Potter. – Approx. ed.) – everything was clear with them, they were already actors then, Dan’s parents were completely from this environment, from the theater . And in our house, with dad – after the divorce of my parents, I lived with my dad more – they didn’t watch films, dad is not fond of cinema. I was in the theater twice before I was ten years old – with my class. And only when the Potter epic ended and I ended up in Los Angeles, my agent said: you need to get used to the city, meet people. It was a shock. I did not expect at all what kind of power I have. The studio heads didn’t shy away from meeting me! And I was surprised at my naivety. And I felt gratitude to my parents – it was they who managed to keep me so close to the ground. Even when I was going to social events, to Potter gala screenings, dad looked me up and down if he was at home at the time of the gathering, and said: “Well, that’s okay. You will survive.” I don’t know what exactly that meant. But the tone was approving, and “you’ll survive” referred to the fact that all these galas are also serious work.

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• I am a victim of my own naivete

Didn’t you feel resentment towards your parents, didn’t you feel abandoned? You were the only child whose parents did not accompany on the set.

E.W.: My dad and mom … My value was determined by whether I could keep up a conversation at the table, how I study and what I read. And so school has always been a priority for me. Dad generally treated us like little adults. I was very surprised when my brother and I wanted to order something from the children’s menu in a restaurant. Perhaps, at the age of ten, thanks to my dad, I was already a very serious little woman. And then, I’m a typical middle-class kid. Parents – both lawyers, no “old money”, no family fortune. Parents were passionate about their careers, the younger brother was small, my mother could not leave him. It would be strange if they sacrificed their lives for mine. And then, on the contrary, it was a disciplining factor: I am nine, and they already trust me so much that they let me go alone. And for my own work!

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• Why are parents so worried?

I was just thinking about money. A middle-class girl, no “old money”, becomes a superstar with a huge fortune. How did you get through it?

E.W.: I didn’t care much about how much money I had. Clearly, I had everything I needed. I learned about my, so to speak, state at the age of 18. Dad said. He asked if I knew how much money I had. I did not know. He said. Tens of millions. Dad was the manager of my money, and when I turned 18, he said: his mission is completed, and from now on I myself am responsible for my funds. I had to plunge into banking, and it turned out that over these almost 10 years my parents took practically nothing from my money … Money … You see, if you have never saved, never needed, your view is not distorted. You see trouble more clearly. Because it often seems that if there was money, it would be possible to help. But you, who have them, know for sure: money is not an absolute means. And only one of, and far from the main thing. That’s why I don’t really appreciate them. And I’m not particularly interested, there, in clothes or jewelry. I have almost no expensive things. I have a laptop, dear. And the rest … After all, everything else, dear – it’s for older women. Even much older. And I want to live at my age. Be equal among peers. In the end, I have the right, I’m from the “survivors” – I was not overcome by the usually evil fate of the “children-stars.” You know, an enchanting rise – drugs – a painful fall into obscurity …

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• “My wife acted like she was on drugs”

Have you consciously avoided this evil fate?

E.W.: Of course, after all, there were so many terrible predictions about us in the press: here are the three lucky ones who won the lottery of life, let’s see how they get out of this luck! But I also moved… a reverse route. People in their youth go towards something, but I, on the contrary, tried to get away from something. From Hermione. She was a poor starting point. She hid reality from me. And so I decided to go to university. In Brown she entered the circle of normal people. Moreover, people are incomparably more intellectually wealthy than I am. I suddenly realized how strange I used to live, how different my life could be without Harry Potter. The first two years without him were not easy. I adjusted to a life without filming, without bodyguards, without Leavesden. But what I loved about university was that no one treated me like I was special. Latin exam – and the fact that you are the same girl from the eight Potter films does not matter! In general, I got a taste. Well, for the red carpet, generous Burberry and Dior dress me up …

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• Attractive name: Dior Addict

And you delight fashion experts and the public by wearing a Dior evening dress over trousers…

E.W.: Because I’m 25 and just recently turned 20! And actually, my clothes are Topshop jeans and sweaters that let’s say my boyfriend gives me to wear.

You also have to ask about boyfriends. Aren’t you afraid to become a victim of “treasure hunters”?

E.W.: If you’re asking if my heart was broken, yes, it was. Twice. And I slapped. She was small, a childish act. Never ever.

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• Can everyone fall in love at first sight?

What I really want to ask is… do you just fall in love or do you choose? An ordinary woman has nothing to lose, but you have something.

E.W.: My first love is my classmate at Oxford when I was a volunteer there for a year. The second is a colleague in the film It’s Good to Be Quiet, the third is also an acquaintance from Oxford. One way or another, they arose from a friendly environment where everyone is equal. Where I was one of many. I can’t imagine relationships without equality. In general, I can not imagine life without equality. Maybe that’s the only reason I agreed to become a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Women mission…

What’s wrong with superiority? After all, the UN Goodwill Ambassador is clearly higher in position than those women for whose daughters’ schools you desperately raised funds …

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• “I no longer tolerate those who do not deserve my patience”

E.W.: You know, there’s this impostor syndrome. This is when it seems that everything that you have, you received undeservedly. That you are that Marktven beggar who looks so much like a king that he is quite capable of replacing him on the throne. True, the state seal can start cracking nuts … And now you are afraid that you might take a wrong step, that you might start cracking nuts with what will turn out to be the state seal. That you will be exposed … Diablo Cody told me: when she, yesterday’s stripper-blogger, received an Oscar for the script of Juno, she did not leave the fear for a long time that all this Hollywood furore was not really happening to her, that she was being mistaken for someone else. I, too, have had this feeling for many years. True, Cody then ended the story like this: “I was consoled only by the fact that everyone around was also, most likely, doubles” … But this brilliant thought, alas, did not visit me. That’s why I’m trying to find my place.

At this very moment, brother and sister come up to us for an autograph. The girl cautiously holds out a notepad and a pen to Emma’s lap. Emma obediently takes them and writes something in a notebook. “You know, I used to write before the autograph as if on behalf of Hermione: “Believe in magic.” Now it’s just, “Love, Emma.”