LONDON: British actress Emma Watson has recently opened up about one of her biggest struggles with the Hollywood industry and the fears it instilled in her around expectations.
The actress who is perhaps best known for playing the young wizard Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films shared her experiences during an emotional conversation on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, reflecting on her journey and the pressures she faced.”
According to Watson, “I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I had developed on Harry Potter, which was that the people I worked with were going to be my family, and that we were going to be lifelong friends.”
And even in other projects, “I came to work looking for friendship,” she admitted. But “that was a very painful experience for me, outside of Harry Potter and in Hollywood, bone-breakingly painful, because most people don’t come to those environments looking for friendships.”
According to Watson, most people “They’re looking for: ‘This is my chance. This is my role. This is what I want out of it. I’m focused. This is my job. This is my career.’ I was not of that mindset.”
However, what it led to was her feeling ‘broken’ because of the way her expectations crumbled. Still near the end of the conversation she said, “in a way, I’m proud that it did, because I guess that means I have something left to break.”
Since her last film, 2019’s Little Women, Watson has focused on her studies. She is currently a student at Oxford University. She has taken a step back from acting.
