Emma Watson reveals Hollywood ‘broke’ her after she left behind the world of Harry Potter

Emma Watson recently talked about her hard time moving from the friendly Harry Potter movie sets to Hollywood’s tough world. The 35-year-old actress shared her story during her first podcast visit on On Purpose with host Jay Shetty. She talked about how the movie business hurt her feelings after she left the popular movies.

Watson played Hermione Granger for more than 10 years in eight movies. She said the Harry Potter sets felt like a real community. Making movies for 12 years helped her build strong friendships with other actors and crew workers. The actress became close friends with her co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint. She felt like they were all family on set.

But when Watson started working on other movies after the series ended in 2011, she learned that Hollywood was very different, according to Fox News. “I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces, and I got my a– kicked. I really did,” she said during the podcast. She found it very painful to learn that most people in the business “don’t come to those environments looking for friendships.” The actress said that Hollywood’s mean nature “broke me.” She started wondering if she was right for the movie business.

Emma’s fight with Hollywood’s tough world

Watson said she wasn’t built for the movie world’s harsh competition. “I’m just not thick-skinned,” she told listeners. “Maybe I just wasn’t built for those kinds of highly competitive environments.” Even though it was hard on her, Watson said she was proud to stay sensitive. She said she would “much rather keep my humanity” than become cold like others in the business.

The actress got emotional when talking about how Hollywood changed her. She said that while the business broke her spirit, she was glad she still had “something left to break” and “a heart left to break.” This helped her see that keeping her kind heart was more important than fitting into Hollywood’s mean culture.

Watson’s worries about fame weren’t new. During the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts special, her co-star Rupert Grint said that Watson almost left the movies after filming the fourth one because fame was too much. Emma Watson previously opened up about reuniting with her Harry Potter castmates, saying the experience meant a lot to her. She said she felt scared about being famous forever.

After finishing the Harry Potter movies, Watson acted in other successful films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Beauty and the Beast. But she decided to stop acting after her role in the 2019 movie Little Women. Reports about Emma Watson’s retirement from acting worried many fans, though her team later said she was just taking a break instead of quitting forever. In a recent talk with People magazine, Watson said the hardest part of making movies was promoting them. She called the constant selling and promotion of projects “quite soul-destroying.”