traits Time Singapore, Life! Section, Wednesday, 8 September 2010
The face you have seen growing up on screen over the past 10 years framed by solid, streaky curls is suddenly devoid of – well, solid, streaky curls.
Emma Watson aka Hermione, geeky, perfect and Best Friend Forever of Harry Potter the infamous movie boy-wizard, has just shorn off her hair.
“I’ve been wanting to do this since I was 16,” she tells Life! in an interview at the swish Berkley Hotel in London.
“But I couldn’t because of the films. I couldn’t wear a wig. It wouldn’t look natural on someone my age.”
The homeschooled daughter of lawyers and current second-year student at Brown University, Rhode Island, had apparently walked into a New York salon alone, emerging from it two hours later minus 30cm of hair – and completely unrecognisable to the paparazzi.
“I was very calm,” she says.
Is this part of a whole new butch look?
“Butch?” she returns, bemused but slightly frowning.
“I think it’s rather gamine actually, rather feminine,” she says. “I’ve never felt sexier. I love it, this new hair.”
And this new me too, for indeed, life after Hermione has just began.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is scheduled to open worldwide on November 17 and in Singapore a day after. Part 2 of the adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling phenomenon will follow in July next year.
With all filming wrapped up last month, Watson is glad to have finally put the enterprise safely behind her.
Several years ago, rumours had been flying about that she was extremely reluctant to take part in the final sequel of the lengthy franchise about an enchanted school and its wizarding students. After all, the 20-year-old has spent half her life working on the films since the first movie was released in 2001.
But with an alleged US$20 million (S$26.9 million) per movie at stake, the decision was surely made clear.
“Having been with the film all this way, it made sense to continue to the end,” she says now. “It’s finished exactly the way I imagined for Hermione – with Ron, the kids, her causes, everything.”
HP7, Watson says, echoing co-star Daniel Radcliffe, is a “road movie”.
“It was good to get out of Hogwarts, run off in search of Voldemort in Scotland and bits of very beautiful English countryside,” she says. “But a lot of it was actually shot in a tent in the studio.”
On the fall-out from her new pixie look -
I was very calm when they cut it. And I deliberately put it on my Facebook profile, so there wouldn't be a fight in the tabloids for the first shot.
On wrapping up the last of the Harry Potter films -
I know it sounds dramatic, but it felt as if someone had died.
On meeting herself as Hermione Granger at the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando this June -
It's definitely strange seeing a ghost - a hologram - of yourself in full size, real-life, up close.
On her 10-year bond with co-actors Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in the Potter films -
After all we've been through together, I don't think anything can tear us apart. We're really really tight.
