Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson, best known for her role as “Hermione” in the Harry Potter movie was born on 15 April 1990. She is a British actress, model, and activist. Emma was born to Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson, both lawyers, in Paris. She lived in Paris until the age of five, but following their divorce Watson and her younger brother moved back to England to live with her mother in Oxfordshire. From the young age Watson wanted to become an actress, she started taking classes in Stagecoach Theatre Arts where she studied singing, dancing and acting while attending Dragon School in Oxford.
By the age of ten Watson had performed in various Stagecoach productions and school plays, including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince. In 1999, casting began for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Watson auditioned for the role “Hermione” eight times as right from the audition she had won the heart of the producers and the author herself J.K Rowling. Rowling supported Watson from her first screen test.
The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001 was Watson’s debut screen performance.The film broke records for opening-day sales. Due to her busy schedule she had to leave Dragon School in 2003 , she and her peers were tutored for up to five hours a day. In June 2006, she took GCSE school examinations in ten subjects, achieving eight A* and two A grades.
She played Hermione for almost ten years, appearing in ‘Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets’ (2002), ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004), ‘Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire’ (2005), ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ (2007), ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ (2009) and the two films of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ in 2010 and 2011.
Watson has promoted education for girls, visiting Bangladesh and Zambia to do so. In July 2014, she was appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador. In September that year, an admittedly nervous Watson delivered an address at UN Headquarters in New York City to launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which calls for men to advocate for gender equality. In January 2016, Emma Watson started a feminist Goodreads book club: Our Shared Shelf.
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