“I can’t talk about how other people perceive me, but growing up, my parents never told me I was beautiful. I never thought I was pretty. I was always the smart, nerdy one. People put you in boxes, and that was my box.”

Emma Watson photographed by James Houston for Natural Beauty

“Emma’s one of the most severely mind-blowing forces of my peer group in acting right now, and I think based on what’s come before this, people just have no idea what she’s capable of. She has become, in these short weeks, one of my dearest friends — I think that will be the case forever — and she is the type of artist who is going to make her true self known in time, and I personally look forward to watching an entire population of Harry Potter fans get their minds twisted into small, pretzel-ish knots over what this girl can do. That’s exciting to me.”

When I started dating, I had this kind of Romeo and Juliet, fateful, romantic idea about love. It was almost that you were a victim – that there was a lot of pain involved and that was how it should be. Shakespeare said the course of true love never did run smooth and I had a sense it had to be painful. It was such a revelation to realise it shouldn’t be that way and you get to choose who you love and who you give your heart to. - Emma Watson

“I worry that I might be seen to be name-dropping or boasting, so I have to constantly be self-deprecating. I feel people are always ready to jump on me. If I show any signs of being a diva or ungrateful, they are just too ready to criticise. It’s like they are desperate to find something they can hold onto. In the first semester I just didn’t talk about my life at home at all. Now I’ve realised that’s just stupid. Harry Potter has been such a big part of my life that if I don’t mention it I’m being fake and my friends are only getting to know a very small part of me. Finally, I’m starting to be able to say, ‘Yes, I’m famous. Yes, I’m in the films. You’re just going to have to deal with it.’ I’m not going to tiptoe around anymore.”