Emma Watson Italian Vogue article - English translation

Italian Vogue article

Is it possible to be included in the annals of cinema when your 18 and you still have your whole career in front of you? Well, looking at Emma Watson, it really seems possible. Class 1990, main character of the cinematic reduction of the biggest fantasy saga of our days: "Harry Potter" will be remembered as the strike-back of an European culture of the beginning of the millennium always more and more influenced by the American imports. It was 1999 when, at the age of just 9 years old, she passed "the audition of the auditions" for any child actor and obtained the role of the Harry Potter's friend, the little bookworm witch Hermione. Since then, nine years have passed and six more films among the most seen of the latest years, "cinematic arm" of the most profitable literary franchise of all time. Among the many records of this "big challenge", it also accompanied the lives of its protagonists: if it's true that cinema and television have done it many other times, especially with the soap operas, where the actors age with their public and their characters, it had never happened to see a movie series so strongly influecing the lives and careers of its really young protagonists as "HP" did.As it usually happens, in discussing "issues" about the myth of celebrity, we often fall prisoners of relativism. Fame and money - guess what - usually bring problems and disfunctions, especially if you suddenly got it too early.Emma agrees too: "In a certain sense, growing up in a film it's difficult. I've lived under the spotlights in a period which - on the contrary - should be full of learning and changing. People have the strange feeling they intimately know me just because they saw me becoming from child to woman, even if only through a screen."On the other hand, it seems like the solid background of her family gave her the right lessons to capitalize her experiences and to not let them overwhelm her. She loves painting, drawing and playing sports. "I would never want to change my childhood in the enterteinment industry. I've learned so much, met so many people of other different worlds and lived incredible experiences. It was a little bit different, but it's okay." Are you actually sure? "There are certain days when I'd like to have a more simple life, but for the rest of the time I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. All in all, who has a normal life?". If the "englishness" of "Harry Potter" is almost limited to the passports of its actors, Emma has all the upper middle class requirements of the case: parents who are lawyers, studies in Ofxord; even her birth in Paris, which makes her a quite "franglaise" creature, synthesis of two cultures historically enemies, but actually in love with each other. She looks aware of the traps of celebrity and fame. "I don't like being treated differently from others, I don't like being considered a celebrity, I don't like the words nor the meaning it has assumed. As far as I'm concerned, I'm an actress". Someone who loves acting and entertaining, who finds the job "interesting, cathartic, scary and exciting", who would like to work with her favorite directors, Baz Luhrmann, Guillermo del Toro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and who for now - "never say never, but I'd be surprised to find myself living over there" - doesn't even think to move to Los Angeles. It's a new Hermione, that woman that millions of fans will find in the next chapter, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince": a young woman who has the right to vote - on the eve of her last effort (the series will end in 2009 [nd. as we all know, it won't end before 2010] in the role that gave her notoriety and that will remain as a milestone in her career. Milestone that risks to become a tombstone: freeing herself from the "Hermione" tag will be the hardest thing to do for the post-Potter Emma Watson, but, knowing her behaviour and attitude, we can bet that she'll be able to do so. In her character, particularly loved by the author, J.K. Rowling, who said she shared many similarities with her when she was a child, Emma has much of herself: "My loyalty, my bad humour, my high-handedness, my will to learn, my competitivity, my determination, my fear of breaking the rules or being in troubles." And if you ask her what fame means to her, the answer, "it doesn't make sense for me, it's the result of what I love to do", sounds strangely not rethorical. In the end, she was born inside it, to the point she considers it natural. On her tastes and favorites there's nothing to object, at least remaining in the territory of the saga: "My favorite film is 'the Prisoner of Azkaban', same as the book. I had fun working with Alfonso Cuaron, and I had a really great role". In fact, it was a chapter directed by an "auteur" and the one where Hermione has a first-plan role. And it doesn't surprise too, that Emma's willing to add something else to her cv, maybe some theather, that theather that - after all - is all the rest in her actress experience (she starred in different school shows, when she was younger). "Yes, I'd like to. Roles totally different from Hermione, though." Talking about her role-model actresses of today and yesterday, the ones that she adds in the second category are quite surprising: it's weird but it's obvious that, for a girl who's born in 1990, Julia Roberts ("I've always liked to be her, when I was a child. Her smile, her actress personality are magnetic") is an icon of the past. The list is interesting: "Emma Thompson, because she's a so smart actress: I admire the fact that she writes her own screenplays. Goldie Hawn, because she's funny and because of her abilities in the show business. Cate Blanchett, because she's an extraordinary actress, and because of the different parts she had to face." Totally different thing, if we're talking about Natalie Portman, for the biographical similarities too: "She attended university, and she's able to behave under the spotlights. I don't know how she can do it. I'd like to receive some advices from her." J.K. Rowling has once said that the casting for Hermione had perfectly worked. Maybe it's because Emma has so much in common with her character: "If I'm feeling blue or stressed I try to apply myself at school. I love to dive in a book or a film". There's something more heavenly for the ears of those millions of HP fans' parents? A better role model for their children it's impossible to find even in a thousand years time.

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