How fame lost its magic for Hermione (that's despite Emma Watson's £30million in the bank)

By Paul Scott

Spellbound: Despite her movie stardom and assured public appearances Emma is said to be struggling to adjust to being public property


While several hundred flashbulbs are fizzing in unison to mark the arrival of Emma Watson at New York's hottest red-carpet event, just a few feet away, a rather less glamorous spectacle is drawing a sizeable crowd of its own.

The driver of the Harry Potter starlet's limousine is involved in a heated and vaguely comical exchange with one of the event's parking supervisors.

Amid much rancour, the official is accusing the actress's car of blocking the arrival of her fellow A-list guests, who include Sienna Miller and boyfriend Jude Law, Mick Jagger and Renee Zellweger, outside the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But her chauffeur is refusing to budge. The reason: he insists he has been specifically instructed by the British actress to remain close at hand should anything untoward happen to her stunning, specially created Burberry gown.

He is on red alert, he is saying, in the event that a careless reveller spills red wine or inadvertently drops a crab puff on Emma's handmade, white, floor-length frock.

Whereupon he will be expected to race inside on a mercy mission clutching an exact copy of the stunning gown, deposited in the boot for just such a calamity.

Clearly the focused Emma is in no mood to leave anything to chance. This may explain why her 'plus one' for the Met Ball fashion gala two weeks ago was not her new Spanish boyfriend, but Burberry's chief creative officer Christopher Bailey.

Who better to have on hand should the off-the-shoulder, slashed-to-the-thigh frock need any final tweaks?

For, despite her tender years (she celebrated her 20th birthday last month), the determined Miss Watson is very much hands-on when it comes to the subject of her public image.


Spare in the boot: Two specially-made gowns were created for Emma Watson to wear at an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York


Witness the actress's over-the-top reaction this week when she called in her lawyers to remove doctored pictures from an obscure website that appeared to show her naked.

At the same time, her spokesman issued a statement insisting: 'If you look at it you will see that the head is marginally too big for the body and the angle of the face is physically impossible with the body in that position.'

Presumably this might equally apply to just about any of the faked naked pictures of female celebrities that litter the murkier reaches of cyberspace.

Would it not have been wiser for Emma, who plays schoolgirl witch Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, just to ignore such nonsense rather than draw attention to it?

The single-minded Miss Watson is not, however, inclined to take such liberties lying down.

Despite her movie stardom and assured public appearances (she is paid more than £1 million a year to promote Burberry at fashion events), Emma, it is said, is still struggling to adjust to being public property.


Ex-boyfriend: Emma with her former lover Jay Barrymore, relaxing on the steps at Brown University


This dilemma is neatly illustrated by her rather schizophrenic approach to her public and private worlds. Take, for example, the morning after that glamorous fashion gala in New York.

Emma was whisked from her five-star Manhattan hotel in a gleaming black Cadillac SUV to the airport to make the short flight to Providence, Rhode Island, where she is about to finish her first-year studies at the prestigious Brown University.

But by the time she arrived back on campus, her transformation from international film star and designer fashion icon to freshman student was complete.

Dressed down in jeans and a simple green top, she returned to the dormitory she shares with other first-year students at the Ivy League college and the tiny room, complete with two single beds, in which she bunks down with a female member of the athletics team.

All of which might seem a tad surprising for a young woman who this year was officially declared the best-paid actress in the world, outdoing Angelina Jolie and Julia Roberts with the £20 million she earned from filming the final two in the series of Hogwarts movies.

Particularly as back home in London, Emma has invested some of her growing fortune in a £3 million townhouse in North-West London and a £1 million Swiss ski chalet.


New love: The actress and her current beau Rafael Cebrian


But Emma, who turned down a place at Cambridge in order to study women's European history and acting at the American university, insists she wants to lead a normal student life. Frustratingly, however, that has not always been possible.

Fellow students told me this week that after arriving on campus last summer, Emma was persuaded by a male member of the university rowing team to become coxswain of the college's varsity eight crew.

Soon, the dainty Emma was a regular sight at the club boathouse or coxing the crew's boat on the Seekonk river.

But it is understood that she was forced to give up her role after the university discovered their insurance did not cover having on board someone who is conservatively said to be worth £30 million.

Nonetheless, the college authorities have issued strict instructions to their students that their famous fellow undergraduate must be allowed her privacy.
At times, however, this well-meaning policy has been taken to rather farcical extremes


Big screen stardom: Emma Watson is seen in the role that made her famous as Hermione in the Harry Potter series, alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint


Two months ago, Emma appeared in her first amateur college production of the Chekhov play Three Sisters put on for free at the university.

Her performance won her a standing ovation. But the reviewer sent to cover the event by the college newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, was barred from even mentioning that the character of Irina in the am-dram production was played by one of the world's most famous actresses.

'We've been told that we mustn't say anything about Emma,' Oona Curley, a fellow member of the theatre group told me. 'We're banned from talking about her.'

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Emma, who was brought up in Oxford and London by her divorced parents, lawyers Jacqueline and Chris, has been the victim of jealousy from some students at college.

At one point towards the end of last year, she was even considering giving up the course and coming home.

This month, she told Vanity Fair magazine she has found the experience a difficult one: 'It was just awful,' she said. 'I thought I must be mad. Why am I doing this? I felt as if I'd walked into an American teen movie.'


Shunning the limelight: Despite the millions she has grossed since her leap to fame, Emma Watson is said to be unhappy with her fame


But despite her homesickness, there have been compensations in the shape of acting student Rafael Cebrian, whom Emma has been dating on and off since November.

The Spanish-born Cebrian, 20, who is the drummer in up-and-coming rock band The Monomes, was spotted kissing the actress at an ice hockey match at New York's Madison Square Garden at the end of last year.

The dark-haired Cebrian is certainly well connected. This year, he was voted the fifth most eligible bachelor in Spain and is the son of Juan Luis Cebrian, the owner of a media conglomerate and co-founder of El Pais newspaper.

But troublingly for Emma, the would-be rock star is known to have a reputation in his home country as a ladies' man who has dated a string of beautiful women, including actress Mercedes Sanchez and singer Ana Lopez.

It is for this reason that he is said to be viewed with some suspicion by Emma's parents, who had tried to persuade their daughter to continue her education in Britain where they could keep a watchful eye over her.

They have had to step in once before to call a halt to Emma's fledgling flirtation with Johnny Borrell, the inappropriate singer and guitarist with indie band Razorlight.


Bad news: Emma was warned away from Razorlight singer Johnny Borrell who is a self-confessed former heroin user


They are said to have gone up the wall two years ago when Emma was photographed partying with the self-confessed former heroin addict, who is not only ten years her senior, but also a former friend of Pete Doherty.

Not least because the actress has a strict good behaviour clause in her contract with Warner Bros who own the billion-dollar franchise to the screen versions of the huge-selling JK Rowling books.

And Borrell, who claimed he was 'a smackhead' at 16 and has previously dated Hollywood starlet Kirsten Dunst, clearly did not fit the squeaky-clean bill of her ideal suitor.

He was quickly replaced in her affections by well-bred financier Jay Barrymore, until she called time on that relationship two months ago.

It had been claimed that her affair with the square-jawed, 28-year-old London University graduate fizzled because he remained in London while she has been in the U.S.

But, in fact, Barrymore, who is an expert in renewable energy and clean technologies, also left Britain at the end of last year to begin a new job with a non-profit organisation in India.


Nice work if you can get it: Emma appears in an advertising campaign for top fashion house Burberry


The couple tried to keep the long-distance relationship going, say their friends, and after splitting up twice had a miserable make or break holiday at the exclusive Round Hill resort in Jamaica at the end of last year.

And while their relationship foundered, Emma - who shot to fame at the age of 11, appearing opposite Daniel Radcliffe in the first Harry Potter film - was becoming ever closer to the charming Cebrian.

Meanwhile, Emma, who will finish her degree in 2013, has been busy preparing for life after Hermione when the final film, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows II, is released next year.

But sources close to her say that she has yet to be offered the bigbudget starring roles they had expected would be rolling in.

Instead, Emma has been bemoaning the lack of decent offers.

'The scripts all have happy endings, they're really badly written and they are sending them to an English literature student,' she says, rather sniffily of the parts she has so far been offered.

But it is generally accepted by crew members on the Potter set that Emma is the least naturally talented of the three co- stars (Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley).

Indeed, despite her big-screen success, she told an interviewer last year: 'There's no burning passion to act.'

I am told by her friends she may yet consider quitting films in favour of starting a career away from showbusiness. Whatever she does, there is one thing that Miss Watson - the somewhat reluctant movie star - can be sure of: she is never likely to need the money.


source: dailymail