<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  It&amp;#039;s nighttime, and London is chic as hell\u2014everywhere except the Mexican dive Emma Watson has chosen for dinner. The place has a distinct after-work vibe; the frost-covered windows glow with garish colored lights and the bar is packed three blokes deep. It&amp;#039;s not where you&amp;#039;d expect to meet the Harry Potter star, yet here we are, sharing chicken fajitas and having a couple of passable mojitos. Watson points behind the bar, proudly declaring: &amp;quot;If you look up at those boards, my name is on them. For tequila shots.&amp;quot; Asked why she chose to meet at the culinary equivalent of Chili&amp;#039;s, she smiles. &amp;quot;I thought I would show you the dichotomy of my life.&amp;quot; At 23, Watson is a minted Hollywood star with an estimated fortune of more than $40 million. She&amp;#039;s a legit fashion icon, making headlines in a backless red Dior Haute Couture gown over pants (pants!) at the Golden Globes. And she is also the most famous college student in America, who, during her sophomore year at Brown University, told a story on the Late Show With David Letterman about how she&amp;#039;d embarrassed herself in class by mistakenly asking for a &amp;quot;rubber&amp;quot; (that&amp;#039;s British for eraser). When we meet, she&amp;#039;s just finished a punishing course on literary critical theory. &amp;quot;I wish I could be, like, &amp;#039;I loved Kant&amp;#039;s theory of aesthetics&amp;#039;,&amp;quot; she says, brushing a stray wisp of hair behind one ear, &amp;quot;but I&amp;#039;d be lying. And I&amp;#039;d sound really pretentious.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s more enthusiastic about House of Cards and Friday Night Lights and Patti Smith, with whom\u2014more evidence of that dichotomy\u2014she&amp;#039;s become unlikely e-pals. Related: Women in Suits: Ladies Who Got it Right When she graduates in June with a degree in English, Watson will face the conundrum that plagues all graduating seniors: Now what? She recently sounded off on Twitter: &amp;quot;Look. I just want to know exactly what the next ten years of my life is going to look like ok?,&amp;quot; adding, &amp;quot;And to have it organised on a colour coordinated calendar. Is that really too much to ask?&amp;quot; Related: 50 Shades of Grey&amp;#039;s Dakota Johnson Revs Up for the Role of a Lifetime For Watson, of course, the vertigo of this particular jumping-off point is magnified a thousand times over. This is a girl who grew up in an alternate universe, playing, from ages 9 to 21, Muggle-born know-it-all Hermione Granger in all eight Potter films. &amp;quot;There are these actresses who have emerged in the last year or two, and they get to emerge as this complete human being,&amp;quot; she says, smiling broadly. &amp;quot;And I&amp;#039;m so jealous! Because everyone has seen me with my terrible haircuts and my awful teeth and all the terrible things I wore and the stupid things I said. I mean, there was a dress I wore to the final Harry Potter premiere. I looked like I was trying to dress like a sugarplum fairy. I looked like a meringue.&amp;quot; Since the Potter franchise wrapped in 2011 (after nearly $8 billion in global ticket sales), we&amp;#039;ve watched Watson morph from a pretty child into a luminous beauty in the mold of Natalie Portman\u2014with, in truth, remarkably few meringue moments\u2014but we&amp;#039;ve watched it mostly from a distance. Now that college is about to spit her back out into real life, she faces the unspoken but implicit question familiar to all former prodigies: What if she&amp;#039;s already peaked? None of which is lost on Watson: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve got so much left to do and to prove,&amp;quot; she says simply. The franchise&amp;#039;s other key players have dealt with its aftermath in fascinating ways. Creator J. K. Rowling released her most recent novel, The Cuckoo&amp;#039;s Calling, under a pseudonym, perhaps looking to avoid a media circus. (The book got good reviews but only became a best-seller after she was unmasked.) Daniel Radcliffe, onetime boy wizard, proved his manhood by showing his manhood, dropping trou for a 2008 Broadway production of Equus. Watson has been more measured in her approach. &amp;quot;I was being offered roles that I didn&amp;#039;t feel were very complicated,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Women that were a bit one-dimensional. Roles that required me to be one thing. Real women never are.&amp;quot; So, rather than embrace mediocre work, she hid out in Providence, Rhode Island, emerging only for projects that would both stretch her muscles and challenge her public persona. In Sofia Coppola&amp;#039;s The Bling Ring, she exuded a fairly chilling pathos as a spoiled brat from Kardashian Kountry who repeatedly burgled Paris Hilton. That the part required her to play a sex object for the first time only added to its appeal. &amp;quot;In my downtime, I don&amp;#039;t sex myself up much,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Sometimes I have a hard time convincing directors that I can play more adult roles.&amp;quot; Twirling on a stripper pole and wiggling in Herve Leger? That&amp;#039;s one way to fix that. And in a cameo in last year&amp;#039;s apocalyptic spoof This Is The End, Watson attacked her innocent image\u2014and, with an ax handle, Seth Rogen\u2014head on. When Danny McBride deadpans, &amp;quot;Hermione just stole all of our shit,&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s Watson who gets the last laugh. Still, Potter is the kind of pop culture phenomenon that may never truly go away. Even on the day we meet, news breaks that Rowling is coproducing a prequel to the series for the West End stage. Watson, hearing about it for the first time from me, looks doubtful and whips out her iPhone to google. &amp;quot;You speak the truth,&amp;quot; she says, adding with relief, &amp;quot;Thankfully, no one can ask me if I can play the younger me.&amp;quot; Tonight&amp;#039;s cheap Mexican food all makes sense as part of Watson&amp;#039;s consciously curated mix of high and low, showbiz and &amp;quot;real&amp;quot;\u2014even down to her outfit: Lanvin heels and knee-high socks from Barneys, paired with a vintage floral skirt unearthed at a Los Angeles flea market. The message is loud and clear: I&amp;#039;m a straight-up college student, talking final exams over tequila! That cover is blown by a 12-year-old boy, who brings his kid sister over to our table to beg for an autograph. Does Watson have a standard script for this sort of thing? &amp;quot;I used to write &amp;#039;Believe in magic,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; she says, a little embarrassed. &amp;quot;Now I just write &amp;#039;Love from Emma.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; When the kids gleefully depart, the boy has left his mother&amp;#039;s expensive-looking gold pen on our table. &amp;quot;This happens a lot,&amp;quot; Watson says with a shrug, eyeing the thing as if it&amp;#039;s radioactive. &amp;quot;I have this amazing collection of pens.&amp;quot; The expression on Watson&amp;#039;s face says what her press-savvy mouth can&amp;#039;t: My life is effing weird. This existence is a long way from bookish Oxford, where Watson was still a kid in grade school when talent scouts came searching for three Potter leads. While Radcliffe and Rupert Grint&amp;#039;s parents quit their jobs to oversee their sons&amp;#039; nascent careers, Watson&amp;#039;s folks\u2014both lawyers who divorced when she was five and between them have six children\u2014made sure she had a chaperone but did not put their jobs on hold for their daughter&amp;#039;s. The importance of having to mature that quickly can&amp;#039;t be overstated. Watson has been painted in the press as a porcelain doll, the Potter alum most associated with her character, first-to-raise-her-hand-in-class Hermione. (Indeed, in true Hermione fashion, when Hurricane Sandy momentarily delayed production of this month&amp;#039;s Noah in New York City, Watson used the downtime to volunteer for Citymeals-on-Wheels.) Still, Watson insists she has rebelled\u2014in her own TMZ-free way. One of her biggest fights with Potter producer David Heyman was not about salary or the size of her trailer, but rather a clash over independence. She was desperate to drive herself to work. (She lost that battle for insurance reasons but did persuade her driver, Nigel, to teach her how to drive.) &amp;quot;I remember reading this thing that Elizabeth Taylor wrote,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;She had her first kiss in character. On a movie set. It really struck me. I don&amp;#039;t know how or why, but I had this sense that if I wasn&amp;#039;t really careful, that could be me. That my first kiss could be in somebody else&amp;#039;s clothes. And my experiences could all belong to someone else.&amp;quot; So while Radcliffe reportedly rarely leaves his house without a bodyguard, Watson memorably began her college career by moving into the freshman dorm\u2014the very definition of exposed. She lopped off her hair; appeared in a student production of Chekhov. There were moments, she says, when she thought, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know if I can do this. Or if this is sensible anymore.&amp;quot; But she held firm, turning down high-profile work that would interfere with her studies. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t want a life where I can&amp;#039;t have a life,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And so I&amp;#039;ve been just unbelievably stubborn about it.&amp;quot; For a time, Watson wasn&amp;#039;t sure she wanted to act anymore. But the script for 2012&amp;#039;s The Perks of Being a Wallflower drew her back with a ferocity for which she was unprepared. Based on the book of the same name, adapted and directed by the author Stephen Chbosky, the film is a sensitive coming-of-age story about high school misfits, with Watson pitch-perfect as a sparkling senior showering attention upon a misunderstood, depressed boy. Asked why she personally went out to raise money for the $13 million indie, Watson cites its message about love, quoting a specific line: &amp;quot;We accept the love we think we deserve.&amp;quot; She makes a rare admission: &amp;quot;I haven&amp;#039;t always dated supernice guys. I guess it resonated with me in that way. That line was a real kind of, Okay, I have a responsibility to myself.&amp;quot; (One such princeling: Francis Boulle, a UK reality &amp;quot;star&amp;quot; Watson once dated, who later told a tabloid they broke up because he &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t want to be the boyfriend of some child actress.&amp;quot;) She says the experience of shooting ,em&amp;amp;gt;Perks in Pittsburgh was more &amp;quot;collegiate&amp;quot; than even college itself. Among her exploits: She dated a costar, Johnny Simmons, and she broke into a swimming pool at 3 a.m. &amp;quot;It was at a hotel,&amp;quot; she reports happily. &amp;quot;It had a gate around it. My friends turned around and basically, I was gone. And the next thing they saw was me seven feet up in the air, scaling this fence.&amp;quot; This, apparently, is not as out of character as we might suppose. Watson says coyly: &amp;quot;I shouldn&amp;#039;t be able to get away with what I&amp;#039;m getting away with.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;She was totally into this experience of being this suburban kid,&amp;quot; Chbosky says. &amp;quot;She didn&amp;#039;t know what an Olive Garden was. We weren&amp;#039;t at the Four Seasons. If she was the kind of person who&amp;#039;d say &amp;#039;I want to stay somewhere ritzy,&amp;#039; that would have set a different tone. But because she&amp;#039;d had such success, it sent a message to everybody else: That this particular movie was for art and was to be real with each other. And everybody followed suit.&amp;quot; Watson isn&amp;#039;t easing down from her Ivy League perch\u2014she&amp;#039;s taking a flying leap, with her most challenging role to date. In the new Biblical epic Noah, from Darren Aronofsky, Oscar-nominated director of Black Swan, she plays Noah&amp;#039;s adopted daughter, Ila. If you&amp;#039;re expecting Life of Pi on an ark, with Watson fighting off CGI animals, guess again. Watson&amp;#039;s costars\u2014heavyweights Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, and Jennifer Connelly\u2014were the most formidable beasts on set. The actress describes the $125 million blockbuster as if it were an intimate character study. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s Shakespearean,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;What happens to this family when they&amp;#039;re put in this confined space for 40 days and 40 nights. It&amp;#039;s the end of the world\u2014how these different human beings are dealing with the impact of that. Are humans good? Are we bad? All of these themes are epic.&amp;quot; The story stretches over many years, which posed a challenge in casting. &amp;quot;You needed the poise of a strong woman,&amp;quot; Aronofsky says, &amp;quot;as well as the innocence of a young child. And of course, a tremendous beauty.&amp;quot; He recalls Watson&amp;#039;s steely nerve on set as she stepped up to both Crowe and some seriously unpredictable weather. &amp;quot;We started off with one of Emma&amp;#039;s hardest scenes,&amp;quot; Aronofsky says. &amp;quot;We shot in Iceland on a beach with an extremely difficult weather situation. The force of the wind\u2014we could barely hear the actors. The sun kept coming in and out. We had to wait for the right light, then, Go, go, go! Then, Wait, wait, wait! She was able to block out all those ridiculous external forces and just focus on the emotion at hand.&amp;quot; (Says Watson with a laugh: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve often wondered if Darren constructed these kinds of situations to test me.&amp;quot;) In previews, Noah reportedly offended religious folk of every stripe, with its unorthodox angels and the suggestion that Noah may have been the first environmentalist. But for Watson, the attraction to the film was personal, not political. &amp;quot;If I was really going to cut it down,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s my first role where I become a woman.&amp;quot; In one scene, she stares out at the coming abyss\u2014a young woman, terrified she&amp;#039;ll never get the chance to grow up. A powerful, lived-in dread fills Watson&amp;#039;s voice as she asks Noah, &amp;quot;Is this the end of everything?&amp;quot; Auditioning, she says: &amp;quot;I think Darren saw that I had something that was very real, from me, to say.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re finishing dinner when a glass falls off a nearby table and shatters. &amp;quot;Chaos,&amp;quot; Watson says, artfully using the moment to deflect a conversation about her future. She&amp;#039;s not quite ready to face the topic, though the questions are already coming from all sides\u2014and not just from journalists. &amp;quot;People are like, Where are you living? What are you doing? I don&amp;#039;t know. I&amp;#039;m too young to decide right now if I want to live here or in America or in New York or in L.A. or wherever else. And I really struggled for the answers the last three years. I should really know! I should really make a choice! I should really commit!&amp;quot; Shortly after we meet, it&amp;#039;s reported that Watson and her college boyfriend, Will Adamowicz, have split. Days later, she is rumored to be dating a bearded, roguish 21-year-old Oxford rugby player named Matt Janney; the two were photographed embracing on a Caribbean beach. Watson had been vague about her relationship status over dessert in London\u2014&amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t possibly answer that&amp;quot;\u2014but she did share a story. She loves to bake banana bread, and reveals that it was a boyfriend who taught her how. &amp;quot;I woke up one morning. I had bananas that were going off. He said, You don&amp;#039;t have to throw these away. Use them. And I was so impressed. It&amp;#039;s been a thing ever since.&amp;quot; I mention her favorite quote from Perks. &amp;quot;A man who makes banana bread,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the love you deserve.&amp;quot; For a self-described control freak, Watson has a lot of white space on her calendar at the moment. She&amp;#039;s shooting a film this month with Alejandro Amen\u00E1bar (the Spanish director behind Nicole Kidman&amp;#039;s awesomely creepy The Others) and has projects in development with Chbosky, Guillermo del Toro, and Heyman. But no other start dates loom. Not that she doesn&amp;#039;t have a survival plan. &amp;quot;You might think I&amp;#039;m crazy,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but I was like, I need to find a way to always feel safe and at home within myself. Because I can never rely on a physical place.&amp;quot; So last year she got certified to teach yoga and meditation. &amp;quot;If I&amp;#039;ve learned anything, it&amp;#039;s really just to stop trying to find answers and certainties.&amp;quot; Before climbing into an Uber car and speeding off into the London night, Watson reaffirms one certainty in her future: her intention to don a very different kind of robe from the one we first saw her in all those years ago, and do a very normal thing\u2014walk in her graduation ceremony. &amp;quot;So many people told me it wasn&amp;#039;t possible,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I kept saying, &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t care.&amp;#039; This is what I want. And graduating will, for me, be really symbolic of all of that. I will be there. And I will be throwing a huge party. And getting very drunk.&amp;quot; This article appeared in the April 2014 issue of ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a13097/april-covergirl-emma-watson-profile/>