Watson is best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, in which she starred from the age of 10 for more than a decade.
She has not acted in a film since her portrayal as Meg March in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women in December 2018.
‘I do not miss selling things’
Asked whether she missed acting, Watson said: “In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual.
“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 straight-forward, and say: I do not miss selling things.”
She added that she found the commercial element surrounding film-making to be “quite soul-destroying”, even though she admitted to missing “using my skill set”.
Her other significant credits include a leading part in The Perks of Being a Wallflower in 2012, playing Belle in the live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in 2017 and starring as Russel Crowe’s daughter in the 2014 film Noah.
She has said she would “consider” a stint behind the camera too now that her break from acting addressed what she called a lack of “good foundations”.
“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,” Watson explained.
Torn into ‘multiple personalities’
The actor recently attended the Cannes Film Festival, which marked her first public appearance in some time.
Discussing why she attended without a project under way, she said: “To actually just have the time – not to be trying to promote or sell something, but just to be able to have a conversation with someone, and to look at other people’s work is the goal.”
Watson reflected on being in the public eye for over two decades, saying that sometimes performers felt that they were torn into “multiple personalities”.
She said: “I think what’s interesting about being an actor is, there’s a tendency to sort of fracture yourself into multiple personalities.
“I’m not just talking about the roles you play, but having the weight of a public persona, that sort of needs constant feeding and sprucing and glamorising.
“It’s very energy-intensive stuff. And shedding the multiple identities has freed up so much space, I think, for me to be a better sister, daughter, friend, granddaughter, and then artist.”
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