It’s been six years since Emma Watson last stepped in front of the camera, but the actress has hinted that she hasn’t said goodbye to show business for good.
“In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual,” Watson reflected on her path to fame in a September 2025 interview with Hollywood Authentic. “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 straightforward, and say: I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying.”
Watson has not appeared in a film since portraying Meg March in 2019’s Little Women. Beginning at age 11, she gained widespread popularity for her role of Hermione Granger for all eight of the Harry Potter films from 2001 to 2011. After Harry Potter catapulted her to stardom at a young age, Watson attended Brown University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 2014.
“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,” Watson continued. “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.”
Scroll below for an update on Watson’s acting hiatus and what she’s working on now.
Is Emma Watson Still Acting?
Though she has been living largely out of the spotlight for the past few years, Watson does not consider herself retired.
“I don’t see myself as having stepped away from acting,” she told British Vogue in January 2024. “I just see myself as wanting to expand what I do and being able to be in things that I have written or directed or produced.”
Watson is currently pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at Oxford University. Additionally, she’s been exploring other avenues in the film industry behind the camera.
“I’ve been directing! And writing! Which has been really amazing,” she revealed. “And it started during COVID and I just realized how much I loved it and I wanted to keep doing that and so I’m actually studying that as well. To direct something that I’d written one day, that would make me pretty excited.”
Why Did Emma Watson Take an Acting Hiatus?
Watson’s decision to take a break from acting came after she made it a point to prioritize her own happiness and interests.
“I wasn’t very happy, if I’m being honest,” she told the Financial Times in April 2023. “I think I felt a bit caged. The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over. To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’ It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”
Watson continued, “I was held accountable in a way that I began to find really frustrating, because I didn’t have a voice, I didn’t have a say. And I started to realize that I only wanted to stand in front of things where if someone was going to give me flak about it, I could say, in a way that didn’t make me hate myself, ‘Yes, I screwed up, it was my decision, I should have done better.’”
Emma Watson Teased a New Project
The Beauty and the Beast actress hinted that she had something in the works in September 2025, but would not share details on exactly what the project was.
“Just been working really hard. I’m working on – actually, I’m not going to say what, because then people are like, ‘Well, when is it happening? What’s going on with this thing?’ So I’m just going to say that I’m working on something that I’ve never done before,” she told Hollywood Authentic. “So I feel a bit like a person who’s in the dark, stumbling around, looking for the edges of something, and hoping [laughs]. It sounds like I’m trying to find a light switch. But it’s good. That’s the process. That’s the process of making things, isn’t it?”
Watson has also revealed she thought about doing some more work behind the camera.
“Yes, I think I’d consider everything,” she noted. “The most important thing, really – or the foundation of your life – is your home and friends and family. 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.”
Emma Watson Misses Acting
When asked by Hollywood Authentic if she missed acting, Watson admitted the thrill of being in front of the camera was a feeling she was still chasing. “I miss that profoundly,” she admitted.
On the other hand, Watson confessed there were a lot of constraints that came with being a movie star.
“But I don’t miss the pressure,” she said. “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.”