Emma Watson in Elle France March 2013

No new pictures inside. Translated interview by me. Credit if you use please.

Elle: You participated to the creation of the new line In Love. Can you tell us a quick word about it?

EW: I wear a lot of makeup while working and a bit in my daily life. I wanted soft colours, a tinted lip balm, a rose-coloured blush for my pale skin, a mattifying spray that would allow me to avoid the powder... Something soft, that'd look like me.

Elle: On the contrary, in the next Sofia Coppola movie, 'The Bling Ring', you play a bimbo from LA who uses too much makeup!

EW: Yes, they put on me fake tan and all! I had to wear Uggs, a push up bra and Juicy Couture joggings. We could see the straps of my bra, which I hate, and I even took pole dance classes... I was horrified! But it was fun to be a bad girl. In real life, I don't really have the space for that.

Elle: Being at ease with the idea that if you refuse a role, another one will come, is it the key to your balance?

EW: Absolutely! It's true it's terrifying to refuse things, but you have to be confident and know your priorities, because if you say yes to everything, it doesn't really mean anything in the end, you're not really committed in anything, and you don't preserve what's more important: time and space for your real life, to take care of yourself. If you don't do that, things will fall down very quickly. This business can eat your soul if you don't pay attention, so you have to go slowly. What you'll give will never be enough, so you can only do your best while knowing that the public and the directors will always want more.

Elle: What are your priorities?

EW: To take the time to have my own life. When I'm filming, I very easily work 14 hours per day, and the weekend I rest.Doing films after films without any break is dangerous. Little by little, you forget about the daily life, you shut yourself away, you neglect your social life, you lose contact with your family. You isolate yourself, and the more it goes, the harder it is to stop working because you're scared of the emptiness. What to do of your free time when it all stops? I'm really aware of this, I pay attention to not arrive to the point where I'll be afraid of stoping filming.

Elle: When we're an actress, doesn't it ask lots of efforts to keep in contact with reality?

EW: Terribly! If one of the reasons why I wanted to go to university. How to play someone who goes to the self-laundry shop or who takes the bus if I have no idea whay is the life outside the set? I'm doing films since I was 9. Everyday I fight to walk instead of taking the car, to go to look for a glass of water by myself, to do this or that by myself. People want to wrap you in bubblewrap. You're a merchandise after all, and they want to keep you nice and warm where they can see you and where nothing can happen to you, within easy reach if they need you to work. When you realise that, you have to defend yourself and say: "I understand that it makes your life easier, but it makes me live mine through a bulletproof glass." Therefore, as a teenager, if I've been rebel, it was to refuse to be treated like a china doll. It's good to be considered as a real person.

Elle: Does literature held to do new experiences?

EW: Yes! Obviously I read lots of scripts and books. I love Just Kids by Patti Smith, I'm finishing reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami. I love poets, William Blake for example, but also philosophical tales like The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. Sometimes I travel so much that I don't know what it is anymore, what day of the week it is or which country we're in. You have to find a way to come back down. So I read, and I try to meditate. It was really hard at first, my whole being was resisting, I could barely stand still 2 minutes without feeling the need to do something - reading, listening to music, distracting myself in one way or another. But it has really been something for me that was definitely worth it.

Elle: Stephen Chbosky, the director of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, said in the US Elle that he felt that success gave you some sort of depth, but also a bit of loneliness. Do you understand why he saw that in you?

EW: Yes, celebrity can isolate you terribly. People see you as different from them, not human in some way. While growing up it was not easy. At school, we all want to be like everybody else, so everything that make you different is hard to talk about.When I was younger, I dreamt of blending in, to go unnoticed. And then, while growing up, I learnt to appreciate my singularity et this fame that allows me to chose to work in amazing movies.

Elle: Are you a cinema star or an actress?

EW: It's funny, I don't recognise myself at all in the expression "cinema star". I like it better when we highlight what I do rather than muy fame, so I prefer people to talk about me as an actress for sure.