TOP OF THE CLASS
From ‘Potter’ to new thriller ‘Circle,’ Watson charts her own path
For Emma Watson, the six years since the “Harry Potter” films finished must seem like a lifetime ago.
Watson, whose suspense thriller “The Circle” opens Friday, was a 10-year-old kid who had only performed in school plays when she began a professional acting career as brainy Hermione Granger in the “Potter” series alongside Daniel Radcliffe's Harry and Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley.
Producing the eight-film “Potter” franchise meant they were never able to be regular kids, despite Watson's threat after five films to drop out of the series to live a “normal” life.
Post- “Potter,” Radcliffe has never stopped, whether it's making films, TV or stage appearances that have won headlines for his willingness to do nudity, campaign for gay rights and do creepy horror films. Grint has done the opposite, working only occasionally and keeping a low profile. Watson has shown that being “Brainy Hermione” wasn't a stretch. At 27, she is the sole member of this celebrity trio to attend college. The Brown University grad (class of 2014) has continued to act and has supported women's rights, gender equality and ecological responsibility through a fashion line.
Watston's high-profile acting career has, like Radcliffe's, intentionally stretched boundaries.
She surprised fans in 2012 as a sexual abuse victim in the teen-centric “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” dropped the F-bomb in the farcical “This Is The End” (2013) and played a Beverly Hills teen thief in the fact-based Sofia Coppola film “The Bling Ring.”
Then came the tough call when she had to choose between two ambitious, possibly career-changing competing musicals.
Watson rejected the riskier choice, the contemporary musical “La La Land,” which won Emma Stone a best actress Oscar.
Instead, she starred as Belle, the independent, book-reading free spirit in Disney's live-action billion-dollarglobal-hit “Beauty and the Beast.”
The role, which again won her critical plaudits, reportedly netted Watson a modest $15 million profit participation payday — that's $3 million to make the movie, plus a percentage after it turns a profit (modest compared to Robert Downey Jr.'s $70 million profit participation payday for playing Iron Man).
Now in “The Circle,” which world premieres today at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Watson is again a bright, independent woman, here caught in a lifethreatening situation.
She's announced that this year will be a timeout from acting to work on “personal development” and women's rights
issues.