Emma Watson on Why She Stepped Away From Acting: ‘My Life Sort of Bottomed Out’

THE RUNDOWN

• Emma Watson gave a rare new interview, where she spoke about her decision to step away from acting.
• The star said she has been focused on balancing other parts of her life: “I think I worked so hard for so long that my life sort of bottomed out.”
• Watson addressed whether she’d return to acting or work behind the camera in the future.

Emma Watson was spotted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, sparking rumors that the actress, who has taken a break from performing to continue her education, was stepping back into the spotlight.

In a rare new interview with Hollywood Authentic, Watson spoke candidly about her future as an actor, along with her decision to walk away from Hollywood. Watson’s last project was 2019’s Little Women.

“In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual,” the 35-year-old, who broke out as a child actor in the Harry Potter films, explained. “But a bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art. 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. But I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art.

“I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed. The moment you get on a film set, you don’t get very long for rehearsal. But the moment you get to talk through a scene—or I got to prepare and think about how I wanted to do something—and then 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. But I don’t miss the pressure. I forgot it was a lot of pressure. I did a small thing for a play, just with my friends. I was like, ‘Bloody hell, this is stressful!’ And that wasn’t even for a real public audience or anything. I don’t miss that.”

Emma Watson at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.

When asked if she’d ever work behind the camera, she said, “I think I’d consider everything.” But she cautioned greater life balance is more important, and she needed time away to focus on that.

“The most important thing, really—or the foundation of your life—is your home and friends and family,” she said. “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. So I needed to go and do some construction work. Some good foundations for anything else to grow from. 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.

“I read this thing recently: Each day, our daily lives have to have satisfaction and completion and meaning, in and of themselves. I needed to go and rebuild that. And I’m very happy and proud I did. Because walking away from things is much harder than walking towards things. Leaving things, and not knowing, is much harder, I think, than having a goal, and being able to tell everyone exactly what you’re up to. So it felt very courageous at the time. And, if I’m being honest, I was mostly just really afraid and quite scared. But I’m very pleased that it was the right thing. Sometimes the hard thing is the right thing, not the easy thing.”

Watson said these days, she’s “maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been. I think what’s interesting about being an actor is, there’s a tendency to sort of fracture yourself into multiple personalities. I’m not just talking about the roles you play, but having the weight of a public persona, that sort of needs constant feeding and sprucing and glamorizing. It’s very energy-intensive stuff. And shedding the multiple identities has freed up so much space, I think, for me to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then artist. And someone who’s trying to do some critical thinking of her own.”