Emma Watson talks about acting ‘paralysis’ after ‘Harry Potter’

You may have noticed that “Harry Potter� star Emma Watson has taken un-Hermione Granger-like roles as of late.

That’s after the 23-year-old stopped acting altogether for a bit and briefly enrolled at Brown University in 2009, then dropped out before completing a degree. Post-�Potter,� the child star, who skyrocketed to fame in the big screen-adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s series about a boy wizard, took on a small role in “My Week With Marilyn� in 2011, fully returned to acting in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower� and made serious fun of herself in the self-deprecating raunch-com “This Is the End.�

But Watson said that she, and even her agent, were “surprised� by her return to acting after the juggernaut that was “Harry Potter� and the eight feature films.

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“I was really unsure, but then I read the script for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ and falling in love with that and then having such a great experience on that movie kind of sealed the deal for me,� Watson told Entertainment Weekly.

“I stopped intellectualizing it, and it became much more instinctual. I just got the bug and got very driven all of a sudden, which I really wasn’t before. But I’m so happy. It’s all felt very new to me, really.�

So she’s saying she really wasn’t all that driven during “Harry Potter’s� decade-long run? Muggle hearts are breaking everywhere.

Part of the struggle stemmed from being pushed into Hermione-esque roles and the media wondering if she was capable of acting outside that type.

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“For a while I kind of bought into the hype of, ‘Will they ever be able to play anything else?’ It gave me a sense of paralysis and stage fright for a while,� she said. “And then a professor told me that they didn’t think I should act, either. So I was really grappling with it and wasn’t feeling good about it. And then, I don’t know … it got so bad and people had put me in a box so much that it started pissing me off. I suddenly wanted to prove them wrong. It gave me fuel, in a way. I’m not sure why that shift happened.�

That could explain why she took the role of Nicki in Sofia Coppola’s teen heist film, “The Bling Ring.�

“Really, I was open-minded about doing anything, but the one thing I didn’t want to do was get myself into a corset because I was worried I’d never get out again,� she said in the May 2013 issue of GQ. “I knew it would be a really comfortable thing to do, but I felt … I had to dive into something really different. This has been a really big departure for me; it’s a really big character. That’s so exciting for me because it meant I was really acting.�

It seems that was around the time the former Burberry model made an “adult decision� about her career, instead of resigning herself to having it be made for her.

“I wanted to make a conscious adult decision that this was what I wanted to pursue, because that decision was made for me as a 9-year-old,� she added. “I had no idea what I wanted. I had no idea who I was, really. So I wanted to step away and make sure this is what I wanted to pour my life and my energy and my blood, sweat and tears into.�

And that’s precisely what she seems to be doing in her upcoming project, “Noah.� She plays Noah’s adopted daughter Ila in the biblically inspired Darren Aronfsky film, which also stars her “Perks� costar Logan Lerman, plus Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Connelly. Russell Crowe plays the titular prophet.

Shocking, right?

Entertainment Weekly’s New Hollywood issue hits stands Aug. 9.

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