- Emma Watson hasn't made a movie since 2018, and there's a good reason for that.
- "I wasn't very happy, if I'm being honest," she said in an interview. "I think I felt caged."
There's a very good reason why you haven't seen Emma Watson in a movie in several years.
As the actor recently told The Financial Times, she "wasn't very happy" with the machinations of Hollywood.
"I think I felt a bit caged," Watson said. "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," she added. "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."
"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," she added.
As a result, Watson hasn't made a movie since she wrapped shooting "Little Women" in late 2018.
But the actor, who has also previously appeared in movies like the "Harry Potter" films and Disney's live-action adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast," hasn't been entirely inactive in Hollywood since she went on hiatus.
She wrote and directed an ad campaign in 2022 for Prada's Paradoxe fragrance, for instance.
"People always told me I should direct and produce, even when I was on 'Potter,'" she said, adding that it was only her brother Alex Watson "and friends asking for favours — 'I need to do a photo shoot' or 'I'm making a video' — that made me realise I actually know quite a lot about that."
Watson's next project will be directing a music video for an artist she won't name at the moment, although "you will definitely have heard of him."
As for whether she'll act again one day, the actor unequivocally said, "Yes."
"I love what I do," she explained. "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 any more."