Emma Watson Opens Up About Her Decision to Take a Break From Acting: ‘I Felt a Bit Caged’

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Sharing her truth. Emma Watson is opening up about why she needed a break from acting.“I wasn’t very happy, if I’m being honest,” the Harry Potter franchise star, 33, shared in a Friday, April 28, interview with the U.K.’s Financial Times. “I think I felt a big caged.”The Perks of Being a Wallflower actress hasn’t appeared in any new projects since Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film Little Women.

She told the outlet that her desire to put her acting career on pause stemmed from feeling like she had no creative input in her work.“The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over,” she said. “To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’ It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”In order to view the video, please allow Manage CookiesThe Brown University alum added that she felt like she was being punished for choices she didn’t make.“I was held accountable in a way that I began to find really frustrating, because I didn’t have a voice, I didn’t have a say,” she explained. “I started to realize that I only wanted to stand in front of things where if someone was going to give me flack about it, I could say, in a way that didn’t make me hate myself, ‘Yes, I screwed up, it was my decision, I should have done better.'”While taking a hiatus from acting, Watson stepped behind the camera to direct a 2022 Prada ad campaign, which she described as a “very” big moment for her.“People always told me I should direct and produce, even when I was on Potter,” she said. “I was worried it was just technical, not creative, and I