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Rise to Fame
She was nine with no professional acting credits when her drama teacher in Oxford submitted her name for Harry Potter. Eight auditions later, she was Hermione Granger. The Sorcerer's Stone broke opening-weekend records and became the highest-grossing film of 2001, with critics singling Watson out by name. She didn't just get hired for a franchise. She grew up inside one, playing the same character across eight films that ran from childhood into her twenties.
In the Spotlight
Watson has been candid that she 'wasn't very happy' during her peak Hollywood years and felt caged by obligations that came with selling films she had little control over. Beauty and the Beast (2017) grossed $1.26 billion worldwide and was 2017's highest-grossing film. Little Women (2019) was quieter and her last. She enrolled in a creative writing master's at Oxford in 2023 and has said future work would mean 'fewer red carpets and more conference meetings.' The career arc from franchise child star to Oxford grad student is not something Hollywood usually writes for itself.
Side Notes
Malala Yousafzai has said the HeForShe speech Watson gave at the UN in 2014 was what moved her to start calling herself a feminist. Before that speech, Watson had already been working with fair trade brand People Tree since 2009, well before eco-fashion became a PR strategy, and graduated from Brown University in 2014 with an English literature degree she earned while still filming Harry Potter. In 2015 she pledged to wear only sustainably sourced outfits to every red carpet event. The activist persona isn't a rebrand. It's what she's always been.