Emma Watson (10 page)

Boozing to someone of her background just wasn’t a big deal. ‘I was never
not
allowed alcohol,’ she explained to the
Sunday Times
. ‘I was seven when I had my first glass of wine, mixed with water and with a meal. I found it really strange when I got to school and everyone was like, “Ooh, we’ve got alcohol!’ I wasn’t interested.’

But the press were very interested indeed when pictures of Emma apparently guzzling beer from a bottle appeared on the Internet several months later. In one of the snaps, Emma could be seen at a restaurant table with a bottle of Corona tilted to her lips, pulling a rather self-conscious ‘Ooh, I’ve got alcohol’ kind of face. The feature writers had a field day with ‘Emma goes off the rails’ stories. Eventually, Emma answered the critics. ‘Well, it was kind of frustrating because I wasn’t even drinking,’ she told
Sugar
. ‘I was posing as a joke! But it’s awkward, because
there’s the story there – “She’s going to be an alcoholic”. Then they bring out the whole screwed-up-child-star thing. It’s when something that innocent is turned into something so serious. I did think, Be more careful. But I never want to get to a point where I feel I can’t live my life. There’s a balance, definitely.’

It was nothing more than any teenager would be likely to get up to – and Emma seemed to be going through a fairly typical teenage experience at this stage in her life, despite her fame. Mum Jacqueline could – in Emma’s words – be ‘fearsome’ and would be the parent most likely to provide punishment. If there was conflict to be found inside the complex series of relationships in the extended Watson family, it tended to be between mother and daughter.

‘Lots of opinions at both sets of parents’ houses’ was Emma’s brother Alex’s appraisal of his sister’s teen-angst period. ‘Emma wasn’t any more bratty than any other teenager, but she and Mum definitely had lots of debates – that would be a good euphemism.’

At this stage, Emma was on £50-a-month pocket money from her dad Chris. ‘He still gives me a monthly allowance,’ she said. ‘He insists! And, to be honest, I appreciate that. It makes me feel more normal. He really helps me because he doesn’t want me to live this completely different, crazy life. I’m not spoilt.’

When the figure was later reported in the press, it was misquoted as £50 a
week
, rather than the more modest real amount. Although she was blissfully unaware of it, she was now a
seriously
wealthy young woman. ‘By the
third or fourth film, the money was starting to get … serious,’ Emma told
Vogue
magazine in 2010. ‘I had no idea.’

T
he idea of starting the next Potter in February 2006 turned out to be an overly optimistic one. All three of the young leads had signed on the dotted line to do it, Emma Watson, it’s believed, being the last to agree, having thought long and hard about it first. But the education of two of the teenagers would get in the way of production. The press reported that it would cost Warner Brothers £2 million to put a freeze on production while Emma and Daniel took their exams: GCSEs for Emma and AS for Daniel.

Emma applied her usual work ethic to the task of passing her exams – but she did allow herself one break to mark a certain milestone. In April, more than 150 people – including Rupert Grint – turned out for her 16th birthday party, held at Hertford College, part of Oxford University. They sang Happy Birthday to her in the college’s
15th-century
courtyard before getting stuck in at the bar – and realising that they had to pay for their own drinks. This was part of Emma’s plan to avoid the event turning too messy, since non-alcoholic drinks such as ‘Hermione Hangovers’ and ‘Wicked Watsons’ were free. Despite the good intentions, the
Sun
gleefully alleged that Emma had been spotted ‘knocking back’ beer, dancing to The Prodigy and being ‘all over’ a boy at the end of the night.

Press speculation about Emma and the opposite sex had been fairly circumspect up until this stage. She believed that boys avoided her because of who she was, or made fun of her to show off to their mates. Also, much of her life was spent on film sets, where most of the youngest available males were ten years her senior. ‘That’s my problem,’ she said. ‘I think, Yeah, he’s really good-looking, but he’s, like, 25! Come on, help me out here! So, no, that’s not really happening. People say to me, “Oh it must be so easy for you, boys must be lining up for you.” It’s really not easy. It’s really not. I suppose guys are … kind of intimidated by me and have their defences up. It’s a minefield, to be quite honest with you. Really. Ugh! It’s stressful. I really like guys as friends, actually. I have about as many guy friends as girlfriends, which is kind of unusual, I suppose. But, because I’m in these films, there tend to be more guys around than girls. Plus, you know, I spend so much time here [on set]. So, yeah. I will just have to wait. Maybe someone will find me. We’ll see.’

According to the press, someone did find her. It appeared that Emma’s 16th birthday marked a major shift in the way she was treated by the tabloid press. They were
desperate for her to grow up and yet wanted her to remain a child for ever. ‘Like Peter Pan, yeah, I think they do,’ she said. ‘I think it’s going to take a while to shake off the British press. Every headline I’m in, there is some reference to magic or broomsticks or witches or whatever! So it will take a while. The books and the films are loved so much that people don’t want to let go, they don’t want it to end but unfortunately I’m growing up, I’m not gonna be young for ever.’

She was becoming more of a target for paparazzi, and being ‘papped’ was all part of the game for many young actresses. But Emma was different. ‘To be honest, I don’t really court them,’ she said when asked about being snapped in the street. ‘I don’t really encourage them. If I know they’ll be somewhere, then I choose not to go there. I live in Oxford, and they’re too lazy, luckily, to get their butts down to Oxford, so I’m usually fine a lot of the time. And when I’m in London I live a very
low-profile
life. Really. I don’t choose to go to a lot of events where I know that they’ll be there. I kind of just avoid them, really.’

But now she was 16. In the eyes of the press, it seemed she was fair game in a previously no-go area: her love life. ‘I love someone who can make me laugh, who makes me feel I can be myself around them,’ she told the
Sydney Morning Herald
, when asked the inevitable question: what kind of boys do you like? ‘Confidence is good; arrogance is not. Someone I can really talk to, who doesn’t bore me, is genuine, just interesting. Someone I can relax with. You have such high expectations. The other way you can look at
it is that, if I list a lot of attributes, then I’m sort of widening my scope. You don’t have to have all the attributes – just one or two will suffice.’

It was as if journalists waited for her to become 16 before rubbing their hands and declaring open season. Before long, she was being linked to the first in a series of young men: rugby player Tom Ducker from Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, also 16. Again, it was the
Sun
that first linked the two, claiming Ducker – who’d recently been signed up by the London Wasps Academy in a scheme to develop young players – was a ‘real-life Victor Krum’. ‘Harry Potter star Emma Watson is dating a rugby ace,’ the paper said. ‘Emma, 16, has been on a string of nights out with strapping Tom Ducker, also 16. He is regarded as such a rising star that he has been signed up by the elite Wasps Academy. Emma – better known as Hermione in the hit films – was spotted sitting on his knee at a party. A source said: “They began dating last September and are very cosy with each other.” Emma recently complained she was finding it difficult to find a boyfriend.’

Emma’s approach to the stories about her and Ducker – and about future romances – would be a consistent one: none of your business. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I did have a boyfriend,’ she said to the
Daily Mail
, when asked if she was in a relationship, ‘as it would be unfair to the other person.’

Slightly more willing to talk was Ali Abdelhafidh, owner of the Castel Plage restaurant on the Promenade des Anglais near Nice. The couple had booked into the
Château de la Chevre d’Or in nearby Eze and were spotted out on the town drinking champagne and eating lobsters. ‘They were clearly loving each other’s company and said they were in a very romantic place, with the Mediterranean just in front of them and great music,’ Abdelhafidh told the
Daily Mail
. ‘They said they were having a wonderful holiday and did not leave until well after 2am. It was great to see a young couple so much in love but Emma had time for everyone else, too. A lot of celebrities come here, including Elton John and Bono, but having Emma here was something special. She’s a real star in every sense of the word.’

Emma was photographed next to a piece of artwork that caught her eye, a black-and-white piece with the words ‘
Je suis incognito ici, faites le savoir
’ in scrolled writing. Tellingly, the words translate as ‘I am incognito here, tell everybody’. ‘Emma fell in love with it and offered to buy it there and then,’ Ali Abdelhafidh told the paper. ‘The words on the piece seemed to sum up her evening. But sadly it just wasn’t for sale, so she posed for a photo next to the picture instead.’

Ducker’s father John was quickly tracked down by journalists to give his view of the reported romance. He toed the party line. ‘They are just friends – don’t read anything more into it than that. My wife and I have met Emma once or twice. She is a lovely young lady,’ he said.

Emma’s relationship with the press was a strange one: they had started to probe into very private areas of her life – something that she disapproved of – yet she became oddly drawn to reading about herself. ‘It became weirdly
addictive,’ she later confessed to
Vogue
. ‘There’s tons that’s not very nice and I’m very, very self-critical, so it was like a drug to me. I focused on the negative stuff, so I stopped.’

An addiction to reading about herself in the tabloids clearly hadn’t affected her studies, though. When Emma got her GCSE exam results, the grades she got were of Hermione-esque proportions. Emma got two A and eight A* grades. It was an amazing achievement for someone who had received such a disjointed education, in between school in Oxford and getting tutored lessons on set. Emma would later say that Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint made endless fun of her because of her success. She ignored them. ‘I’m so chuffed,’ she told the
Scotsman
when she got the results. ‘I’m over the moon.’

Meanwhile, the press reported that Emma was about to step away from the Potter franchise and go it alone in a film. Rupert Grint had been the first of the Potter kids to break out on his own and make a movie outside of Hogwarts. He’d featured in the 2002 film
Thunderpants
, about a boy whose uncontrollable flatulence is harnessed by scientists to assist in a space rescue. Daniel Radcliffe’s first non-Potter outing was set to be a little more highbrow – after
Goblet of Fire
, he’d been cast in the Australian coming-of-age drama
December
Boys
. It was revealed that Emma had been cast as adventurer Kate de Vries in a film adaptation of
Airborn
, a teen-oriented novel about airship pirates. Despite stories confidently predicting she’d signed on the dotted line, the film was never made. There are still hopes that production will eventually start on the film with a different actress in the role.

One film that was definitely being made was
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
. The fifth part of the franchise had a new director, David Yates, best known in Britain for his politically charged television dramas such as
State of Play.
Like others before him who’d come into the Potter world, he’d never read the books. ‘Hadn’t read a word,’ he told the
Guardian
. ‘It wasn’t part of my world. The problem was I was dropping in on series five. So I went back and read all the novels and then I was hooked. I spent the next year working on the script.’

Emma now had to get used to her fourth director: ‘It must have been really hard for him … All the cast and crew know each other and are buddy-buddy. Everyone is this big family. David wanted to really not forget the other films we’ve made. He wanted to take everything we’d learned and bring it all together in this one. He used flashbacks from the other films, which was so weird – there’s a shot of me when I’m 11. Mike [Newell] and David are the first two British directors we’ve had, but they are such different personalities. Mike is very eccentric, very British, a very big character. And then there’s David, who is very softly spoken, very thoughtful and perceptive – quite gentle. I had to adjust myself – it took a while for me to understand him, but now I’m really fond of him.’

One thing that Emma had to adjust to as filming began was the number of takes that Yates liked to get from his actors – 30 was apparently not an unusual number of times as Yates strove to get the performances he wanted. ‘The word that I connect the most with David Yates … is truth,’ Emma later told IGN Entertainment’s news-and-reviews
website. ‘He always wants to find truth in all the characters and in each single performance. He had high standards but I think Dan, Rupert and I really relished that, as it stopped us getting complacent fifth time round. I think we all really learned something from him. It was really nice.’

The director was full of praise – albeit slightly guarded – for the young actress. ‘I think Emma could have a great career,’ Yates said. ‘If she’s smart enough to choose the right material, she could be fantastic. We have seen a fraction of what she’s capable of yet.’

One scene where the performers didn’t seem to mind the number of takes was Harry’s first kiss with Hogwarts pupil Cho Chang, played by Scottish actress Katie Leung. ‘We probably got it on the 30th take,’ Daniel Radcliffe later said. ‘My God, it was fun. We were awkward and nervous at first but, once we got it, it was fine.’

Yates would have to guide all the young actors – including Emma – through their first onscreen kisses. From the start he made sure the teenagers were made as comfortable and relaxed as possible on the set. ‘The first thing I did was clear the floor,’ director David Yates told film journalist Stuart Jeffries. ‘Otherwise, the prop guys, everybody, turns up for a good look. I got Daniel and Katie to talk about their first kisses. You have to do that to make the atmosphere intimate. I told them about mine and they told me about theirs. It was about them getting lost in each other, to get them to forget they were on a film set.’

As ever, new actors joined the Potter family for the latest film. Oscar-nominated actress Imelda Staunton came on board as Dolores Umbridge, the pink and perky Defence
Against the Dark Arts professor who believes that naughty children should be punished.

‘She’s in a whole new league of bad guys’ was Emma’s evaluation of the new character. ‘She’s so horrible. There’s something so sinister about her as well; it’s a different kind of evil because she’s so disguised. It makes it scarier. She’s such a screwed-up, messed-up person.’

Giving Umbridge a run for her money was Bellatrix Lestrange, the unhinged witch loyal to Lord Voldemort, played by Helena Bonham Carter. Emma felt particularly drawn to Bonham Carter, not only because they were from similarly well-heeled backgrounds, but because film success had come early to both of them. ‘She understands the pressures, having starred in
A Room with a View
when she was 18,’ Emma told the
Sunday Times
in 2010. ‘We’re very similar. She needs to know absolutely every detail about each character she plays, so she asked me a hundred and one questions about Hermione and wrote it all down. Her script was covered in notes. I’m the same. I’ve read all the books several times. I have to know everything.’

Order of the Phoenix
would be the only Potter not scripted by Steve Kloves, who claims he was asked to write the film on ‘the wrong day’ and turned down the job. It went instead to Michael Goldenberg, who’d previously worked on films such as the mystical sci-fi epic
Contact
and had been in the running to write the first Potter film before the job went to Kloves. ‘It’s a story about Harry reconnecting in general, and coming to appreciate what he’s got, and at the centre of that, of course, is his friendship with Ron and Hermione, ‘Goldenberg told the
Potter fansite
The Leaky Cauldron
. ‘That’s always been the core of the story, the three of them. There’s something about those three characters, and those three actors, that’s so powerful. And the performances that David has gotten, and that they’ve given, are just extraordinary. I really think people are going to be blown away. I really think it takes it to a whole different level.’