Emma Watson
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Emma Watson: The magic touch
Being an international child movie star can be a bit trying.
For example, while making the new film Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Emma Watson became somewhat cheesed off with the movie's director, who likes to have, on average, 30 takes for each scene.
She asked him if she was "contractually obliged" to repeat her lines so many times. David Yates perhaps mindful of the fact that this teenager was being paid £1million for her performance as Harry's sidekick Hermione told her that actually, yes, she was.
It was a rare display of attitude from Emma, who is very popular on set and who has close relationships with everyone from her driver, who loves her like his own daughter, to the producer.
"She is genuinely a very popular girl," says a source on the movie. "I never hear people bad-mouthing her, and I've worked with her for seven years."
There was a time when some thought she was haughty and a bit of a madam. But evidently that behaviour has evaporated.
And who could begrudge the 'Potter children' a bit of normal teenage angst, given the pressure of working long days on this preposterously successful movie franchise?
Now, though, the 17-year-old has grown in confidence and blossomed into a stunning young woman. She has worked under four different directors, while managing to gain a stellar clutch of GCSEs (ten A-grades).
And it's not only her intellect which has grown in size; her bank balance is not to be sniffed at, either.
"Let's be honest, I have enough money never to have to work again," she told an American magazine. Then, in a display of her grounded nature, she added: "But I would never want that."
Despite the success of the Potter films, she has seriously considered walking away from the series. In fact, this thoroughly sensible starlet plans to complete the final two movies and then take a degree, possibly at Cambridge.
She will then perhaps go back and train as an actress all over again.
"School life keeps me in touch with my friends," she says. "It keeps me in touch with reality."
However, her beauty means that she is being tempted down a different path altogether.
Aged 17, she is this month's cover girl for Tatler; her strong brows, winsome smile and tiny waist make her an arresting sight. For the magazine's photo shoot, she wears a variety of incredibly expensive items by Chanel and Sonia Rykiel, but nothing too racy.
This is partly down to Emma's down-to-earth nature, but also reflects the tender sensitivities of the bosses at the movie company behind the Potter films, Warner Bros, who are eager to protect their multi-billion-dollar franchise from any whiff of rebellion.
Warner is extremely concerned that the teenage stars, who they still refer to as the 'Potter children', are not permitted to grow up too soon, and have done a great job of shielding them from the limelight over the past seven years.
"The kids have remained natural because we have protected them from all of this," an executive cautions.
While all of the actors have been advised of the pitfalls of being famous, Emma has her own strategies: she changes her mobile phone number regularly and steers well clear of nightclubs.
"She has been very well-handled from the beginning," says Grazia magazine's fashion guru Melanie Rickey. "What she wears is in keeping with her Potter character. There's no sense of her rebelling against her image. The Chanel dress she wore to the premiere last week was very well judged it was exactly the right length, worn with exactly the right shoes and the right make-up."
In fact, Emma has a burgeoning interest in designer fashion. Some Potter fans may be taken by surprise to discover that she has been quietly signed up by the model agency Storm, which launched the career of Kate Moss.
"She is on our books," the agency confirmed, but would say no more about what work it may have lined up for Emma.
According to well-placed sources, though, she will shortly be unveiled as the new face of Chanel in a worldwide deal.
And how Chanel must be salivating at the prospect of harnessing the formidable power that Emma Watson has over the teen market. She was voted Britain's greatest female role model in a magazine poll earlier this year, ahead of Keira Knightley and Kate Moss.
Last month, she was the belle of the ball (dressed in Chanel, again, of course) at the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation Gala at Hampton Court.
A fellow guest told the Mail: "She breezed in, took a glass of champagne and posed for the photographers. She was incredibly self-assured.
"She was following the likes of Elle Macpherson and Tamara Mellon, but she didn't seem in the slightest bit bothered. She was a star and she knew it."
And if it makes commercial sense for Chanel, you can bet that Emma will get her share, too. She is reportedly worth somewhere between £5million and £8million already, and much more is to come from the Potter money-making machine.
By the time she is 20, she may be worth as much as £15million. This spring, she was the last one of the three lead stars to sign up for the final two films. As a result of her reluctance to commit, her pay was doubled to £2million a film (still far shy of Daniel Radcliffe's rate of £8million per movie).
Emma was not sure whether she could take on a further two Potter films as well as complete her A-levels at her £3,500-a-term private school in Oxfordshire, do a gap year and start university.
She did not want to compromise her academic career whatever the financial incentives.
In the end, bosses have agreed that she will film some scenes in September for the next film and then be given a long break until January so that she can make inroads into A-level coursework for geography, art-history and English literature.
She has also been given every Monday morning off to allow her to study.
Intriguingly, it is said that her divorced parents, Chris and Jacqueline, were giving her conflicting advice about whether she should sign up for the final films or not.
However, the ultimate decision was hers. At the moment, the money is held in a trust until she is 21 and she is simply given a monthly allowance. But her parents, both lawyers, are thrilled that she is proving to be such a sensible starlet.
She loves most of all to be at home in Oxfordshire with her mum, her mum's partner, Emma's younger brother Alex and their two cats.
At weekends, she goes to London to see her father, a successful commercial lawyer who has remarried, owns a vineyard in France and has a taste for Hermes ties.
Her parents are on reasonable terms and attend her premieres together.
For someone who could be tempted by the high life, she has had only one real blow-out a 16th birthday party at Hertford College in Oxford, where at least 100 friends partied until the early hours.
The event is said to have cost £150,000, but Emma level-headed as ever insisted that revellers paid for their own drinks and made sure that non-alcoholic cocktails were also available.
Although she attended the Gorbachev gala with actor Henry Lloyd-Hughes, he is just a friend. She is said to be dating Tom Ducker, a handsome, dark-haired rugby player who has been signed up by Wasps.
Of course, there has been a lot of gossip about a tendresse between her and Radcliffe, but this is always denied.
Daniel once said that they don't speak or text when they aren't filming Potter, and in an unguarded moment confessed that he found her pretty annoying at times.
"It's fair to say that Emma and me have had our moments, but when you are with someone for six years, and you see them practically every day, there are bound to be moments when you just irritate each other," he said.
They are, though, on good terms now, and at the party after the Leicester Square premiere last week spent quite a long time chatting and joking.
When Radcliffe admitted that his female fans were kissing his new waxwork at Madame Tussauds and suggested that the girls should "come and get a taste of the real deal", Emma said she would not be taking up the offer: "Oh no! I've known him far too long. He's more like a brother to me."
As for life after Harry Potter, she has said: "I'll feel a bit lost when it all finishes, I guess. It's made up such a big part of my life and dominated so much time.
"It's restricting long hours, and I miss my family a lot but if I had the chance to do it again in a million years, I would say yes
By ALISON BOSHOFF
