Emma Watson Talks About 5-Year Break From Acting

Five years after the Harry Potter alum appeared in her last movie, the 33-year-old opened up about why she took a break from her acting career.

“I think I felt a bit caged,” she told Financial Times in an interview published April 28. “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.”

As Emma—whose last role was in 2018’s Little Women—noted, “I was held accountable in a way that I began to find really frustrating.”

“Because I didn’t have a voice,” she continued. “I didn’t have a say.”

“And I started to realize,” Emma added, “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.'”

But as for rumors that she’s stepped back from her craft altogether? The Perks of a Wallflower star shut those down, adding that she’ll “absolutely” take on another role in the future.

“I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing,” Emma noted. “I love what I do. It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don’t want to switch into robot mode anymore.”