Emma Watson (14 page)

At a party for Burberry in 2009.

©
PA Photos

Emma with final
Potter
director David Yates.

©
Rex Features

Emma’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at the 2009 premiere of
Half-Blood Prince
in London.

©
Getty Images

‘She wants to be a rock chick after ten years of
Harry Potter.
’ With indie singer George Craig at the Glastonbury Festival in 2010.

©
Getty Images

Emma with JK Rowling and the haircut that caused a sensation.

©
Rex Features

Emma at a shoot for Lancôme in 2011 – the company described her as ‘the icon of her generation’.

©
Rex Features

To drive his point home, Watson sent his daughter on a three-day course in ‘wealth management’ at Coutts, often referred to as ‘the Queen’s bank’ (you need half a million pounds just to open an account there). The ‘assets and responsibility’ course was designed for people between the ages of 17 and 23 – who just happen to find themselves with an extraordinary amount of money. The course used guest speakers to teach students how to follow the stock market and make low-risk investments. ‘It’s an important course because these young people are at an age where they’re beginning to handle their own wealth,’ a spokesperson for the bank said.

For years, Emma had essentially pretended that her money didn’t exist – she was able to do this largely because she didn’t really need it: she had her pocket money, she had a driver to take her to and from the studio, she flew around the world at the film company’s expense and she went on skiing holidays with her family. Money – and how much of it she actually had – was a mystery to her. ‘I had no idea,’ she recalled in an interview with
Vogue
in 2010. ‘I felt sick, very emotional. It was a real shock.’

The money and the freedom that it gave her seemed to create more problems than solutions for the teenager. Not only did the sheer volume of cash seem to baffle her, but Emma’s attitude was: why would someone my age need this much money? ‘The wealth side of it hasn’t hit me yet because I have no need for money in my life,’ she explained to
USA Today
. ‘I still live at home. I eat meals with my family every night. I don’t go out a huge amount. I don’t really travel a lot. My life will not be motivated by money.
I will never do a film because they’re going to pay me a certain amount of money. It’s liberating. It means that I can hopefully make great choices.’

Emma insisted that, when she said that she didn’t know what to do with the money, she was being deadly serious: ‘I still haven’t had all of my money transferred into my bank account. That would be stupid.’

After spending Christmas with her family – ‘Christmas is a great time to just veg out and watch lots of really rubbish reality TV, eat lots of food and just catch up with people’ – Emma passed her driving test in January 2008; she had her eye on a Toyota Prius. ‘It’s not the prettiest car on the road, but it’s good for the environment. It’s sensible and boring – like me.’

But Emma’s ‘sensible and boring’ image was about to take a few knocks, thanks to her choice of male companions. First up was Johnny Borrell, lead singer of indie band Razorlight and former member – albeit briefly – of The Libertines with tabloid favourite Pete Doherty. Emma was spotted with the singer at a series of London parties spread over one eventful evening in February. The pair met at a party held by
Vanity Fair
editor Graydon Carter at the National Gallery to celebrate 100 years of photographs that had appeared in the fashion magazine. Along with Emma and Borrell, Lily Allen, Twiggy, Bryan Ferry, Will Young and Bob Geldof’s daughter Pixie were also at the event. That most useful of journalistic sources, the ‘onlooker’, told the
Daily Mail
, ‘Emma had gone over to speak to Pixie Geldof, who was chatting to Johnny at the time and Emma and Johnny immediately hit it off. It
was clear they had loads to talk about even if they don’t look like they have much in common.’

To the delight of photographers outside the event, Emma and Johnny then jumped into a taxi and headed for another event – another fashion party, this time held by fashion label PPQ at the Dolce nightclub in Soho. Emma, dressed in a strapless tan-coloured dress, and Borrell in his grey cardie did indeed seem an odd couple – but the snappers had their picture for the following day’s papers. Two hours later, it was off to the Dorchester to a private party. Borrell was eventually thrown out of the hotel at 2.30am, when his behaviour got a bit too lively for the five-star hotel.

Borrell’s racy reputation – he had boasted of his
drug-taking
past and declared himself a genius in the music press – sent gossip columnists into overdrive. The
Daily Mail
claimed that Chris and Jacqueline, Emma’s parents, had told her, ‘in no uncertain terms that she’s not to see Johnny again’. That other newspaper regular, a ‘source’, said, ‘They have always kept a strict eye on their daughter and are very protective parents. It was a huge shock to see their little girl coming out of a party with hellraiser Johnny on her arm. He’s 10 years older than her and he’s admitted to being a drug addict in the past. They’re also concerned because his last girlfriend, [
Spider-Man
actress] Kirsten Dunst, ended up in rehab after splitting from him.’

Emma was so incensed by the reports that she was seeing the singer that she put a denial on her website. ‘Oh my God, that is so not true!’ she said in the online post. ‘I only met [Borrell] once and we shared a taxi from an event to
the after party, but never let truth get in the way of a good story and all that.’

The media seemed intent on getting Emma married off before her 18th birthday – preferably to either Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint – but she was adamant that the single life was for her – for now. ‘When I’m older I’d love to be married – success is meaningless without someone to love,’ Emma told the
Mirror
. ‘But he’ll have to be intelligent, interesting and able to hold a conversation. Not someone who bores you out of your mind. There aren’t a lot of gentlemen out there, unfortunately. But I’m waiting for my knight in shining armour. I’m sure he will come along at some point. Relationships are complicated enough without reading that you’re breaking up or getting back together or cheating on one another every five minutes.’

And when they weren’t trying to pair her off, the press were waiting for her to go ‘off the rails’ and kick back against her strait-laced image, and Borrell provided the perfect peg on which to hang the story they were desperate to write: Hermione Rebels. ‘I do things in my own way, but I’ve never felt any need to rebel,’ Emma told
Marie Claire
. ‘To be honest, I’ve always had far too much freedom. I had a job when I was 10. I started living on my own when I was 17 or 18. I’ve earned my own money; I’ve travelled the world. What would I rebel against?’

She even threatened that her ‘off the rails’ years were ahead of her: ‘I’m sure when I hit my thirties I will go crazy. I’ll have this rush of hormones and madness.’

Emma was adamant she never saw Johnny Borrell again after that night, but it wasn’t long before she was being
linked to another man. This time, the event was the
Empire
Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane just three weeks later. The ceremony was attended by Matt Damon, Ewan McGregor and James McAvoy – but it was events at the after-show party at Marble Arch’s Carbon Club that really caught the columnists’ eye. Emma was spotted getting up close and personal with a blond-haired man in his twenties. One onlooker said, ‘He was definitely into Emma. As soon as she got there, they took a corner table at the back of the bar and were engrossed in conversation. They clearly wanted to be left alone. Soon after they sat down with friends, his hands were all over her and then they started to kiss.’

Perhaps mindful of the stir they had created, Emma and the ‘mystery man’ left separately and took different taxis away from the venue. One paper claimed that the pair met up later at a West End hotel. It didn’t take long for the press to name the man as 25-year-old financier Jay Barrymore. It was the start of an 18-month cat-and-mouse game for the couple, with newspaper editors keen to grab pictures of when they appeared out together – or even when they didn’t. They were snapped at art exhibitions, on the way back from the supermarket in north London or even poolside while holidaying in Jamaica – pictures of Emma were hot property, usually accompanied by some knowing quotes from mysterious ‘pals’ or ‘insiders’. ‘I try not to read it, but it’s hard,’ she told the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Who doesn’t want to read about themselves? But it’s always written with this tone – as if the person knows me. But they don’t.’