Emma Watson Is Taking A Year-Long Acting Break

Actress, feminist and all-around brilliant human being Emma Watson is stepping out of the silver screen limelight for the next twelve months. Watson has a number of film-related projects on the go – namely a live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast – but revealed in a new interview that she needed to take time out to focus on herself and her mounting activism work.

“I’m taking a year away from acting to focus on two things, really. My own personal development is one,” she said in an interview with Paper Magazine. “My own personal task is to read a book a week, and also to read a book a month. I’m doing a huge amount of reading and study just on my own. I almost thought about going and doing a year of gender studies, then I realised that I was learning so much by being on the ground and just speaking with people and doing my reading.”

We’re not surprised the woman needs to put something aside and take time off, as she has a huge amount on her plate at the moment: as well as her film roles, she is a?UN ambassador and her new book club, Our Shared Self, she is also involved with her HeForShe campaign commitments, which are stepping up a notch this year with a HeForShe arts week, a university tour, and a new HeForShe website.

When I was 9, during my first-ever Harry Potter conference, I said I was a ‘bit of a feminist’!

And she’s only 25 years old.

Her acting hiatus will also see her take a step back?from the?glare of the public eye, which she says can be very difficult to deal with at times.

“I feel I have to be quite vigilant. It’s made me sad at times. I feel that fear of am I’m looking at this from all of the angles, how can this be interpreted, how can it be taken out of context?? But I do have a lot to learn and I should be wary,” she said.

She also mentioned that now, she is more than happy to be compared to her Harry Potter character. “At first, I was really trying to say, ‘I’m not like Hermione. I’m into fashion and I’m much cooler than she is,’ and then I came to a place of acceptance. Actually, we do have a lot in common. There are obviously differences, but there are a lot of ways that I’m very similar. And I stopped fighting that!”

And in case you didn’t know, she first used the term feminism, when she was just nine-years-old.?”When I was 9, during my first-ever Harry Potter conference, I said I was a ‘bit of a feminist’!”

Also, there’s nothing more positive than when a hard-working young woman admits she needs more time to focus on just being herself. We hope she gets some well deserved ‘me time,’ as she’s well and truly earned it.

Via Paper Magazine