Emma Watson

Emma Watson was nine years old when she went through eight auditions in her school gym in Oxford. The producers at Heyday Films were looking for a girl who could memorize entire paragraphs without losing her natural touch. And the gamble paid off because J.K. Rowling knew it was her after watching the first camera test.

In 2001, the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone shattered every commercial expectation. Watson went from being an anonymous student to a global figure with a contract that tied her to a makeup chair for almost a decade.

There was no turning back.

She earned 125,000 pounds for the first installment of the series. But the money didn't stop Watson from feeling stifled by clauses that prevented her from cutting her hair or changing her physical image. In 2007, she seriously considered leaving the project before signing on for the last three films.

It wasn't an impulsive decision.

The Contract That Almost Fell Apart

The pressure to fit the mold of Hermione Granger led her to seek refuge in academia. In 2009, she enrolled at Brown University to study English literature. She wanted to prove that her mind worked beyond the Leavesden film sets.

During the filming of The Perks of Being a Wallflower in 2011, she asked to be treated like any other supporting actress. That role was her first real attempt to move away from British magic and explore American independent film. And it worked in terms of critical reception.

In 2014, she gave a speech at UN headquarters in New York that changed public perception of her career. That event generated **more than a billion social media interactions** and definitively moved her away from the label of a young star.

Movies stopped being her only priority.

Watson turned down the lead role in La La Land to focus on the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast in 2017. That negotiation included a base salary of 3 million dollars that rose to **15 million after the worldwide box office tally**.

Managing the Silence

In 2019, she played Meg March in Little Women under the direction of Greta Gerwig. It was an ensemble production in which Watson accepted a supporting role to work alongside a top-tier cast. That shoot marked the start of a voluntary break from the screen that would last several years.

Because her interest shifted toward investing and creative directing. In 2022 she wrote and directed an advertising short film for the Prada Paradoxe fragrance. It was the first time she took full control of the image in an international luxury campaign.

In 2023, she and her brother launched a luxury gin brand called Renais. The project uses recycled grapes from family vineyards in France and aims to carve out a space in the premium spirits market.

The company reported revenue of several million euros in its first full fiscal year. Watson maintains her primary residence in London and has remained on the Kering board of directors since 2020.