Authors: David Nolan
For Barrymore – who was, after all, from the world of finance not show business – it was a hard task getting used to the attention. ‘It’s rubbish being my boyfriend,’ Emma later admitted to the
Sunday Times
. ‘People are constantly coming up to me, I’m always working, I’m always away – they don’t get a huge amount out of it.’
Emma was about to learn just how far photographers were willing to go to get the picture they wanted in April, when she turned 18. The attitude of the press had changed towards her when she hit 16, but on her 18th
all
bets were off. Emma celebrated her birthday with a dinner at the American-styled Automat restaurant in Mayfair. Her brother Alex was there – ‘About the only bloke I can go out with and not cause a stir,’ she said – along with Potter co-stars Tom Felton and Katie Leung. Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint were notable by the their absence. Emma finally made her way home at 4.30am ferried by Dad Chris under a mountain of presents.
Much was made of Emma’s unsmiling, ‘miserable’ appearance – one paper referred to her as ‘Her-Moany Granger’, unable to fathom why a young woman who’d just come into a multimillion-pound fortune could look so glum. The reason didn’t become apparent until a few weeks later. ‘It was pretty tough turning 18,’ she revealed to the
Daily Mail
. ‘I realised that overnight I’d become fair game. I had a party in town and the pavements were just knee-deep with photographers trying to get a shot of me looking drunk, which wasn’t going to happen. I don’t have to drink to have a good time. The sickest part was when one photographer lay down on the floor to get a shot up
my skirt. The night it was legal for them to do it, they did it. I woke up the next day and felt completely violated by it all. That’s not something I want in my life. I just kept thinking that if it had happened a day earlier people would have sued their arses off.’
The so-called ‘upskirt’ pictures appeared in the press the next day – the
Sun
saved Emma’s blushes by covering her modesty with a picture of Rupert Grint’s grinning face. Emma would make a point of making sure she was never caught out the same way again. ‘I find this whole thing about being 18 and everyone expecting me to be this object … I find the whole concept of being “sexy” embarrassing and confusing. If I do a photoshoot people desperately want to change me – dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a miniskirt. But that’s not me. I feel uncomfortable. I’d never go out in a miniskirt. It’s nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn’t do that. Personally, I don’t actually think it’s even that sexy. What’s sexy about saying, “I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt … have a look at everything I’ve got”? My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal, the more people can wonder.’
The actual day of her birthday was spent – like so many days in her young life – on set filming the next Potter instalment,
Half-Blood Prince
. ‘Today I am 18. I can’t actually believe it, it’s so exciting,’ she said in a video posted on her website. ‘I just wanted to send you a message to say thank you so much for all of your birthday wishes.
I’m so touched that you’re thinking of me. I’m having such a great day … I’m here in my dressing room at Leavesden, I’ve just had my breakfast [strawberries and Nutella – the spread was her favourite food] before I go down to set. I’m having such a good day.’
The cast and crew gave her a huge 18th-birthday card that they had all signed. On the back of the card were pictures of Emma and her young stars as they were on the very first film. She would later cite that day as being her favourite moment of making the forthcoming film. ‘Turning 18 on set and having all my friends celebrate it with me!’ she said.
That month, it looked like Emma’s plans for an acting life outside of the Potter franchise were to get another boost. It was announced that she had signed up to star in a feature film –
Napoleon and Betsy.
The project had been bubbling under for several years with Scarlett Johansson in the role of Betsy Balcombe, a young noblewoman who falls in love with Napoleon Bonaparte while he is in exile on the island of St Helena. Johansson stepped aside when the part was ‘skewed younger’ – the polite way of saying that she was deemed too old – but she remained involved as a producer. ‘It’s a strong relationship but it’s not sexual,’ Emma told the
Daily Mail
. ‘It’s very complex. A touching of souls. She was a very young girl and he was this older, incredible man.’
But the project floundered – there was even talk of a rival project starring Al Pacino as Napoleon – and has yet to see the light of day.
‘It’s a project I love and am attached to,’ Emma eventually said when it finally looked as if the film was not going to be made. ‘I don’t know if or when it will happen. I hope it does. I’m afraid that’s the nature of filmmaking. You learn not to become too emotionally involved as scripts come and go and many of them never get off the ground.’
In August 2008, Emma got straight-A grades in her A level results in August. For a young woman with such an uneven education – her final coursework was couriered to the set at Leavesden from Headington School – it was an extraordinary result. A message was posted on her website to mark her success: ‘We are absolutely delighted to let you all know that Emma received straight As in her three chosen subjects namely English literature, geography and art!! As you can imagine Emma is absolutely thrilled and we are all very proud of her.’
‘I am very focused and very motivated,’ she said when asked how she managed to combine the two so successfully. ‘So I have tried very hard to combine being an actress with being a student, and so far it has worked out OK. I feel it’s terribly important to continue with my education, in case acting doesn’t work out for me.’
Potter producer David Heyman added his congratulations. He knew better than anyone how disruptive filming had been to her education. ‘She’s a seriously intelligent young lady,’ she said. ‘She got the highest grade in Britain in English in her A level. She’s a fierce mind. In the beginning of the series she was less comfortable with being like Hermione. She was always
really smart but when you’re told when you’re young that you’re smart that’s not cool. But now she realises that she’s more like Hermione than she imagined and that’s not such a bad thing at all.’
Her exam success had another effect: it planted the seeds of several interests that Emma would carry into adulthood. One was art. She would continue to draw and paint well after her exams had finished and loved to quiz actors such as Alan Rickman – who’d been to art school – about their shared passion. ‘I guess I’m a little shy about my art,’ she later told
Interview
magazine. ‘But I love painting people and expressions and faces. I’ve always done art, though not a lot of people know it.’
Geography studies resulted in an interest in ethical trade – an interest that she would put into action in the coming 18 months. ‘I had a very inspiring teacher called Mrs Bedford who taught me geography at A level,’ she said. ‘I did my coursework on the developing world, Fair Trade and different practices in the garment industry. I found it really shocking. People get so detached from what they eat and what they wear. No one sees. No one has any contact with how things are made before they put them on their bodies or put them in their mouths. I find it alarming that no one questions it.’
Emma was at a crossroads – and she began to question whether acting was really for her. She definitely wanted to go to university, but the question was where? Oxford ran in the family, but could she really get down to her studies in this country – and how would she juggle any film offers with her education? ‘I’m at a strange age,’ she admitted to
The Times
. ‘I’m not a woman yet, but I’m not a girl any more. [Film companies] say, “Oh, in a couple of years you’ll be perfect for this.” I’ll be like, yeah, but I want to be studying English then, so it’s going to be quite tough to choose between the two.’
Perhaps an Ivy League university in America would be the answer. This elite group of top universities – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale – were among the best in the world and had been favoured by fellow performers in the past. ‘Jodie Foster [Yale] did it, Natalie Portman [Harvard] did it,’ Emma said. ‘I think it’s entirely possible to juggle university with filming.’
Meanwhile, despite confident predictions in the press, it turned out that Emma was not in fact going to be the new ‘face’ of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle perfume, a job currently filled by actress Keira Knightly. The fashion house had expressed an interest in providing clothes for Emma to wear at premieres but a Chanel spokesperson said, ‘Whilst we have a close friendship with Emma Watson, there is no contract.’
Once again, Emma used the Internet to put the record straight. ‘Another media myth I’m afraid,’ she said in a posting on her website. ‘I love Chanel and have a fantastic relationship with [creative director] Karl Lagerfeld, but there has never been any discussion as to my becoming the face of Chanel.’
The ‘loss’ of the non-existent contract didn’t stop Emma shooting into the list of the highest young earners in Britain, thanks to her 18th-birthday windfall. Speculation
raged about how Emma would spend her newfound wealth. It turned out to be a mixture of the low-key and the extravagant. ‘I got myself a laptop,’ she told
Interview
magazine. ‘I took my dad to Tuscany,’ she recalls. ‘He works so hard, my dad, so I rang up his secretary and asked when he was free, and I booked us a holiday. What else? Oh, I got myself a car. I got my licence last year and I love the Prius, even if my friends say it’s ugly. They say I drive a brick.’
There would be one other significant present: a
million-pound
ski chalet in the fashionable resort of Méribel in France. ‘That’s a family thing,’ she told
The Times
when asked about the property. ‘We’re all going up there for Christmas. I love skiing.’
‘The house is Emma’s way of celebrating her recent straight As at A level and finally getting her hands on some of her hard-earned cash,’ a ‘friend’ told the
Daily Mail
. ‘Like her co-stars, Emma has received some pretty sound advice about money. She always wanted a ski chalet and she’s having a great time doing it up. She’s looking forward to having friends to stay.’
Despite this, Emma still clung on to what normality she could, taking the train and the Tube when she was travelling to her parents’ homes in London and Oxford and when visiting friends. ‘I have a more normal life than people expect,’ she said. ‘When I take public transport, people are like, “That girl looks like the girl from Harry Potter, but it can’t be her on the train.” I get stopped by people, but that’s fine. I’d never want to be so famous that I couldn’t live a normal life to a certain extent. I can’t
imagine anything lonelier, just not being able to be part of the real world and being trapped and locked in hotel rooms and cars.’
But there was now no way she could still pretend that she wasn’t seriously rich, as she had in the past. Emma Watson accepted her wealth as she had done her fame. ‘Let’s be honest,’ she admitted to
Parade
, ‘I have enough money never to have to work again, but I would never want that. Learning keeps me motivated.’
J
ust as
Ballet Shoes
was about to be broadcast, Emma had started work on the next, and sixth, Harry Potter film,
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
. She believed that working on the BBC drama had helped her greatly – not only in terms of her acting, but also in deciding what she wanted to do with her life. ‘Having an experience outside of Harry Potter really helped me,’ she told the
Edmonton Sun
. ‘I think it convinced me that this is where I am meant to be and this is what I’m meant to be doing – that I do want to be an actress. But I think I needed to have an experience outside of Harry Potter because, in a way, I was really plucked out of obscurity and given this role. I mean, I really wanted it, but it never felt like a decision that I made. It just happened to me. I felt that I won the lottery. So I’ve always kind of slightly questioned it.’
As ever, change was in the air and, after the brooding
angst of the last film, director David Yates was promising a change of direction. ‘It’s all about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,’ Yates told journalist Will Lawrence on the
Half-Blood Prince
set at Leavesden Studios. ‘OK, maybe we should take the “drugs” out. Really, this film is more sex, potions and rock’n’roll; but there are all these wonderful things in our story. For a start, there’s Felix Felicis, which is a drug that gives you perfect luck. You take it and everything goes right for you, but it also heightens your senses somewhat and you get quite “breezy” with it. Then there’s a love potion that makes you very tactile with everybody.’
Emma was looking forward to some onscreen romcom moments with Rupert Grint: ‘I think all of the stuff between Hermione and Ron will be really funny and quite fun to play as well. So I’m quite looking forward to all of that. I’m very excited that David Yates will be back for this one. I feel like
Order of the Phoenix
sets you up so well for
Half-Blood Prince
and it feels like there’s unfinished business, that David Yates has more to give to the series.’
Hermione was required to throw some graceful wizarding shapes this time around, so an expert was called in to help Emma with her moves: ‘We actually had a dance choreographer. All the spells had different choreographed specific movements that went with them and so we had a couple of classes like that, which was really good fun. And I think this is the first one that you really see kind of like the craft behind magic.’
Now that she had finished the books, J. K. Rowling found time for two on-set visits, much to Emma’s
delight. ‘She has more input in the films now that she’s stopped writing the books,’ Emma said. ‘But she’s so busy. She’s got a family and she’s writing and everything. She’s more involved now, which is really nice, and whenever I see her I get on really well with her. She’s really funny – very, very witty.’
One of Rowling’s visits formed part of the first
read-through
of the screenplay, where she sat next to producer David Heyman. ‘It’s always a very nerve-racking moment,’ he said. ‘You’re thinking, Oh my God, what is she thinking? She made a note next to this one speech of Dumbledore’s and we were walking out and she said, “You know Dumbledore’s gay?” And I had no idea until that moment in time.’
The ‘outing’ of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore became public during a
question-and-answer
session in New York while Rowling was on a promotional tour to promote the final book,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
. The Potter stories already had their enemies in those who felt they promoted Satanism; now they had another reason to boycott the books. Emma stepped up to defend the author and condemn those who used the news to attack the series. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was reading,’ she told the
Sun
. ‘This is the 21st century! I just could not believe the amount of fuss that was being made over Dumbledore being gay. I find it so shocking … Oh my goodness! I never actually thought about it before but, when she said it, I thought, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”’
New sets were built at Leavesden for the film with an
astronomy tower being a highlight. There was also the usual sat-nav tour of British locations brought into play for filming: the Millennium Footbridge and Surbiton train station in London, the village of Lacock in Wiltshire (which has managed to preserve its 18th-century look) and Cape Wrath at the very far northwest tip of Scotland.
New cast members came on board, including
Oscar-winning
actor Jim Broadbent as Professor Horace Slughorn, who managed to make one of the more unusual Potter debuts. ‘When this story begins my character, Professor Slughorn, is retired from his teaching post but he is being pursued by Death Eaters, so he is on the run,’ Broadbent told the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘They are after him quite seriously, so he has to change location and identity on a weekly basis, even if this means disguising himself as a chair, which, given his magic powers, is not a difficult thing to do. In fact, we first meet him as a chair. I have certainly been a lavatory seat – in a voiceover. But I think this is a first, the first armchair anyway.’
Broadbent – with a hundred screen credits to his name – experienced that slight feeling of intimidation common to many experienced actors on entering the Potter world. In an interview with the
Guardian
, the actor said, ‘It was rather daunting turning up on set with all these young actors. It could so easily have been a nightmare, given that the five films have had such huge success. But the kids turned out to be terrific. There was no brattish behaviour or starry
Fame Academy
behaviour; they just get on with it.’
Producer David Heyman had a theory about why Emma
and the other young stars just got on with it: ‘On the Harry Potter set, we have a lot of crew from the first film,’ he explained to the Press Association. ‘You can’t get away with anything there, you get joshed and played with. You can’t have any airs or graces. I’ve been very fortunate with the kids. There are so many cases of young kids being damaged by the experience or going off the rails and fortunately with Dan, Rupert and Emma that hasn’t happened to them … yet! I don’t think it’s going to happen to them, they’re pretty together, really good kids – well, young adults now.’
Director David Yates observed, ‘Our cast are just getting that little bit older now and the hormones are starting to fly and for me it marks a real transition point between our cast as children and our cast as adults.’
There was to be a change to the usual pattern of release and promotion of the Potter films for Emma and all those involved.
Half-Blood Prince
had been scheduled for release in November 2008 – it now wasn’t due in cinemas until summer 2009. Alan Horn, president of Warner Brothers, denied there was a problem with the production. He said the decision was made to guarantee the studio a major summer blockbuster in 2009 after filmmaking ground to a halt thanks to the 2007–08 strike by the Writers Guild of America. ‘The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 per cent on schedule, on time,’ he said. ‘There were no delays. I’ve seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November.’
In the end, another film filled the gap left by the shift in the Potter schedule:
Twilight
, starring former Hogwarts
pupil Robert Pattinson, was released in November 2008 and it cleaned up at the box office, making Pattinson a worldwide star. ‘I’m just gobsmacked by the level of excitement and hype around
Twilight
,’ Emma later told MTV when ‘R-Pattz’ mania took hold. ‘I’m very happy for Rob that it’s been so successful. He is incredibly handsome! He is a very, very handsome man, so I’m not too surprised.’
It was also announced that the final Potter instalment,
Deathly Hallows
, was to be split into two films, which would entail a monster 54-week shoot. All three films would be directed by David Yates. The decision to divide the climax of the series into separate releases was as much of a surprise to Emma as it was to Potter fans – where in the story would the split be made? ‘I don’t know,’ she replied when asked by MTV. ‘I am as intrigued as you are. I am waiting at the moment to receive the script. It’s a tough call. I’m sure it will be some cruel cliff hanger.’
‘We’ve played around with a couple of places,’ said producer David Heyman when asked by
Empire
magazine about where the split would be placed. ‘And ultimately settled on a place that we think is very exciting, and I think quite bold, in that it’s not necessarily where one might expect. You want to give a sense of completion, on one hand, but a sense that there’s another piece, more to come.’
Cynics, of course, thought they knew the reason for splitting the final book: it would allow Warner Brothers to double their money. Among those cynics was Emma Watson: ‘At first I thought, Oh my God, three more movies? I was overwhelmed. I thought, Is this a money spinner? I was very cynical and dubious about it. I was not
immediately impressed. But I thought about it and talked it over with the producers and they said there’s just no way we can fit everything into one movie. It will be too much. It won’t be true to the book, we couldn’t even call it
Deathly Hallows
because we might not be able to fit that story in. We’d have to call it something else, which would be crazy. As soon as I saw the logic behind it, it made perfect sense and I was totally behind it. But at first I had my reservations.’
‘I swear to you it was born out of purely creative reasons,’ David Heyman insisted to the
Los
Angeles Times
. ‘Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book. You can remove scenes of Ron playing Quidditch from the fifth book, and you can remove Hermione and SPEW and those subplots, but, with the seventh, that can’t be done. I went to Jo [Rowling] and she was cool with it … and that was quite a relief.’
As a result of the new production schedule, Emma had some time to herself for the first time since she was nine. She planned to use it wisely. She went travelling and it was something of a novelty when she realised that she didn’t have to worry about getting a suntan – something she was contractually obliged not to do if she had a Harry Potter film coming up. ‘I’ve just come back from Kenya. It was amazing,’ she said. ‘I’ve just always really wanted to go there. I went to Masai Mara, and I went to beaches and it was a great place. I’ve just got back from Hong Kong too. I may go over to New York to see Daniel Radcliffe in
Equus
over there. I am going to make the most of my time off.’
And that’s exactly what she did. With school finished, a freer Potter schedule and a gap year beckoning, Emma was able to cut loose, pursuing the things that she wanted to in the
way
she wanted to. First up, she caused a major stir attending London Fashion Week. Fashion writers were taking notice of what she was wearing and which designers she was checking out. ‘
Harry Potter
star Emma Watson was worlds away from her tomboy character Hermione Granger this week as she checked out the latest looks at London Fashion Week,’ noted
Hello!
‘With not a strand of hair out of place and natural poise which would have made any catwalk queen proud, the 18-year-old actress more than held her own amongst the style set.’
‘Emma Watson is making her way stylishly up the fashion ladder,’ purred
Vogue
. ‘Sitting front row at the Christopher Kane show yesterday afternoon, she really liked what she saw.’
Scottish born Kane – who’d already collaborated with celebs such as Kylie Minogue and Gossip singer Beth Ditto – had unveiled a chiffon and leather collection that season that had proved an instant hit with critics – and with Emma. ‘I haven’t worn his clothes before but I met him at a party and he showed me some of his dresses on other girls and I just knew I wanted to see more,’ she said. ‘I loved them. I’ve always been really interested in art and fashion. I’ve only ever been to one fashion show before – the Paris–Londres Chanel show – but this season I’m seeing this one, Giles Deacon tonight, and then I’m going to Paris to see Balenciaga, Chanel and McQueen. I really can’t wait.’
True to her word, Emma headed for Paris taking in the French equivalent of London Fashion Week, viewing collections by Sonia Rykiel (‘Amazing’), Chanel (‘That was a big deal’) and Giambattista Valli (‘I don’t even know where to begin’). ‘I’ve been to fashion shows before, like the Chanel show that was in London in December,’ she told Style.com. ‘But this is the first time I’ve been to shows like this. This is my first time at [Paris] Fashion Week, and, let me tell you, it’s pretty intense.’
As if to seal her fashionista credentials once and for all, Emma appeared in the September 2008 issue of
Vogue Italia
in a shoot with Mark Seliger, best known for his celebrity portraits for
Rolling Stone
magazine. The pictures saw Emma adopting a series of ‘characters’ led by Seliger’s editorial style. One minute she was a Grace Kelly-style movie star dripping with jewellery, then a lovelorn princess by a lake and next a forest wild child.
‘The Italian
Vogue
photoshoot was a fascinating experience,’ she said. ‘I was very excited to work with
Vogue
for the first time, but also to be given the chance to model couture. Each dress was so special and important and we only had a short time to shoot each one before it had to go elsewhere to be worn or shot by someone else. This meant the shoot had a real momentum. And the jewellery to match each dress came with its own security guards. I was terrified of ripping, getting mud, cake, a prop, or anything on the dresses! I felt like I was learning a whole new set of rules to a new game – just like shooting a film.
‘Mark encouraged me to become a different person or
character for each photograph and so they all tell difference stories. So, in the end, I combined two loves: art/fashion and acting. I enjoyed the fact that Mark treated me like he would have done any other model and pushed to get the best out of me. I learned a lot and have found a whole new respect for the hard work models put into their work and for couture. A love affair has begun.’