"Soul-destroying": Emma Watson gets candid about promoting films six years after quitting acting

Emma Watson is pulling back the curtain on her life after the limelight. In her recent interview with Hollywood Authentic, the Harry Potter alum opened up about what she misses (and what she doesn't) about acting.

The 35-year-old star dished on the difficulty behind the grind of promoting films she had little control over, which made her feel "quite soul-destroying."

"In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual. But a bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art."

She added:

"The balance of that can get quite thrown off. 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."

Emma Watson admitted, challenges aside, that she still longs for the craft of telling and shaping a story on screen.

"I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art. The minute the camera rolls, and getting to just completely forget about everything else in the world other than that one moment – it’s such an intense form of meditation. Because you just cannot be anywhere else. It’s so freeing. I miss that profoundly."

Emma Watson reflects on what pushed her to step away from acting: "You realize you don’t have a rhythm to your life"

Since December 2018, Emma Watson hasn't taken any roles, signifying her hiatus from the limelight. The actress shed light on her career break during her tell-all with Financial Times in 2023, citing feeling "caged" as a factor.

“The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over. To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’ It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”

Emma Watson continued sharing how it frustrated her to be held accountable when she didn't have a voice.

“I started to realize that I only wanted to stand in front of things where if someone was going to give me flak about it, I could say, in a way that didn’t make me hate myself, ‘Yes, I screwed up, it was my decision, I should have done better.’”

In her Hollywood Authentic interview, the Perks of Being a Wallflower star confessed that her years of pushing herself in her career made her eventually hit rock bottom, prompting her to do "construction work" in her life to carve out "good foundations."

"The most important thing, really – or the foundation of your life – is your home and friends and family. I think I worked so hard for so long that my life sort of bottomed out. The bottom fell out of the piece, which was actually me and my life."

The Little Women actress added:

"Because if you don’t have that, there’s a kind of mania that ensues; a kind of panic where you move from one project to the next, kind of terrified of the void in between them. You realize you don’t have a rhythm to your life."

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For Emma Watson, walking away made her feel "really afraid," but she's proud of herself for being able to do so.

"I’m very pleased that it was the right thing. Sometimes the hard thing is the right thing, not the easy thing."

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