March 26, 2013

Emma Watson: "I'm a great table tennis player, I'm a machine"



Translated by Watsonuncensored. Credit if you use it.

"Beauty and career! Please! Questions about beauty and career...". The press officer for the cosmetics firm that has sat Emma Watson (Paris, 1990) on the huge sofa in the suite of the second floor of a hotel in the French capital lost patience as well as his good taste in how to dress. Two minutes before coming into the room to start trying to get sincere answers from Watson, the actress, who has come to talk about her lipstick and her next film under the direction of Sofia Coppola, was thrilled with how her encounters with the press was taking place as she appears ready to share beauty tips with her interlocutor. "The questions are fun, it's more relaxed," announced the girl who was nine when she landed the role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series.

Now the conversation takes a different turn."A naked frontal like Daniel? Well, I think there are other ways to stand out from Harry Potter. I don't like to think of my career as it is now as a reaction to what I did before, because it's something that has helped me become who I am today. I prefer to think and choose my work positively". That's how Watson put distance with the kind of post-Harry Potter career Daniel Radcliffe has chosen and that has little to do with the way she has undertaken hers. In the next room, the press officer must be biting the curtains. "It's complicated, because I'm young and there are few people around me ready to tell me no. That can be a problem. Many people depend on me ... It's hard to say no to people. I'll never be able to do enough, I always expect more from me. When I tell myself that I'll never be able to do everything, I feel better. I do what I can". And now the man can't take it anymore and comes back to interrupt the room. "Beauty and career!" he repeats before disappearing again.

Watson, quite naturally, sips her water and continues her speech as if nothing had happened. "Do you know? Sometimes I get bored, but my father always says that people who get bored are boring. I try not to forget that. There are always things that you can find interesting and make them your own way," she insists without saying exactly what she's referring to. She, who after 10 years working steadily in cinema, got tired of the public being able to see her grow up live, enrolled at Brown University. There, things didn't go exactly as planned, as her sabbatical time with the cinema was interrupted when she signed for the filming of 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower', a film with generational airs that allowed her to test her American accent and define the profile of her career, now choosing independent films. But really what she likes are romantic comedies like Notting Hill. Just the opposite of what all actresses say, preferring the Art and Essay cinema, but admitting the need to film commercial stuff. That's how original Watson is. "Ha, ha, I'm not thinking that way. I don't know, when I get home and I watch movies, it's to escape. If you knew the crappy stuff that I watch, " she jokes.

Her next film will be made by Sofia Coppola and is about The Bling Ring, a band of teenage criminals who devoted themselves for some time to sneak into the mansions of celebrities from Beverly Hills. They sniffed cocaine that Paris Hilton kept at her home and peed in the living room of of Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr's mansion, and also stole money and jewelry in the palaces they entered. Thanks to them, the world learned that Paris Hilton was not only losing her phone every week, but that she was also unable to remember to lock the doors of her house. The story helped the actress to consider her exposure. "It is a reflection on fame, and that interested me. With this story I learnt to understand things about my public profile. For example, you can't always be 100% yourself. You must be professional. In the end, when you talk it's to promote your work, you can't be too sincere. The person who talks to you now is not the same as the ones from your family or your friends. Anyway, I try to be as honest as I can, without forgetting that this is a job ".

Despite the turmoil in which she involved in, she expects to finish this year, after her second year at Oxford University, her degree with a final semester again at Brown University. "In college I feel comfortable, although, again, it's hard to be yourself when you are being watched. I thought I would go more unnoticed," she says. "Sometimes I have to keep some aspect to myself to be able to promote my work. I have to force myself for that and to be part of the game, but I have to fight because the game does not take over everything. Again, besides all this fuss and these obligations, I must be able to show a bit of who I am. It's clear that you become the character you create, but I'm aware that the public is also interested in seeing the person". And that person, despite her youth, knows exactly where to draw the line in regard to privacy and, above all, knows how to give the public what they want. "You want me to tell you something private?" whispers the actress pretending that we're still following the rules to avoid a third visit of the head of the press. "Okay. Here I go: I'm a great table tennis player. Nobody believes me, but it's true, I'm a machine. I also paint and draw, but in reality what I am best at is table tennis. For the next interviews I'm going to ask them to put a table and bring a racket, so I can prove it. "

It was in 2011 that the actress joined Lancôme, a firm that also work with Penelope Cruz and Julia Roberts. "My relationship with Lancôme began with a meeting to know the people of the firm. It was very good, we connected very fast. The truth is that I have become very involved, to the point of going crazy for all their products. I have to be a part of the whole process. Otherwise, I don't feel like I'm getting any reward from the work," she says about the origin and form of her partnership with the French firm. Images of the line In Love are composed of pastel bases, fuchsia and others closed to a juvenile universe with an innocent air. "You must be careful with how you work with companies as big as this," she insists. "It's a big job. You should feel comfortable talking about it. If not, it becomes very fake and complicated for both parties. For me, it's good, I enjoyed makeup from an early age. I love creating different looks, I worked with great makeup artists and I tried to learn from all of them. In addition, the brand is French, I'm sensitive to that, and it's how I connect with it. I grew up in France." This afternoon, when she'll have finished answering questions about beauty and career and when she won't be jet lagged anymore, she will go see her grandmother, which, although it has little to do with her career and even less with beauty, is what she likes to do every time she visits Paris.

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