Film industry sexism fired a commitment to feminism in the star, next in Beauty and the Beast. But, despite a UN women’s role, some are unconvinced of her dedication to the cause

‘I don’t know what my tits have to do with it,” said the actress Emma Watson last week – the “it” being feminism. She was responding to a mild public furore over a photograph published to accompany an interview in Vanity Fair magazine to support her role as Belle in Beauty and the Beast. In the photo, she’s sporting a Burberry cape that exposes most of her breasts.

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With feminism central to her personal “brand” as an adult actress, in particular, since her appointment in 2014 as UN women’s goodwill ambassador, it’s not surprising that the photo raised some questions about the nature of her feminism. It’s also not surprising that Watson snapped back.

Born Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson in Paris in 1990, Watson’s British parents were lawyers who divorced when she and her brother were young; the family returned to England, where Watson grew up between Oxfordshire and London.

Prior to her casting in Harry Potter, Watson’s acting experience was sorely limited: she had played three small roles in childhood productions, including a turn as “an angry cook” in a production of Alice in Wonderland. But after the recommendation of a theatre teacher and eight auditions, Watson was cast as Hermione alongside Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter and Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley. From the debut of the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the UK), in 2001, the three unknown child actors became some of the best-known performers in the world. By 2009, with the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Watson’s earnings in the series made her the industry’s most highly paid actress.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Photograph: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

With her education split between the independent Headington School in Oxford and time spent with on-set tutors, life seemed to imitate art when Watson proved to be a star pupil who could rival her top-of-the-wizard-class alter ego, Hermione. Watson’s impeccable GCSE and A-level results were much reported in the press, concurrent with uncomfortable coverage of her body. She has recounted how photographers lay down on the pavement outside her 18th birthday party in order to take pictures up her skirt. “If they published the photographs 24 hours earlier they would have been illegal,” she said in a speech given to mark International Women’s Day in 2016, “but because I had just turned 18 they were legal.” Watson has cited this kind of sexism and sexualisation, experienced growing up in the film industry, as lying at the heart of her interest in feminism.

In 2010, Watson enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island, a decision she took in part to help her avoid the British tabloid press. During her time at Brown, American media reported that “bullying” from her peers led to her decision to take a leave of absence from the university in 2011 – indeed, her attendance at at least one football game was live-tweeted by student journalists. But Watson explained that her decision to withdraw came from “a desire seek out normality… I kind of have to accept who I am, the position I’m in and what happened.” She was, in other words, extremely famous.

Watson continued acting intermittently through her time at university – she did make an eventual return to Brown after a period as a visiting student at Oxford. Though she’d expressed a desire to pursue work other than acting on numerous occasions, it continued to be the focus of her career. Following the release of the final Potter film in 2011, Watson was seen in a number of new films, including The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring (2013) and Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 epic, Noah.

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Post-Potter, Watson has been widely regarded as a competent actress, somewhat safe in her choices, occasionally overrated or miscast because of the power of her fame. Publicity around The Bling Ring, for example, was heavily focused on Watson, giving short shrift to the rest of the cast. In the Guardian, Catherine Shoard described Watson’s performance as “well-toned” but also “afforded excess airtime” in comparison to the other performers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emma Watson plays Ila in 2014 film Noah, directed by Darren Aronfsky. Photograph: Allstar/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Since her UN appointment in 2014, the best way to describe Watson’s relationship with feminism is to say that she has made it an intrinsic building block of her public identity; the interview in Vanity Fair is just one of many in which she’s held forth on women’s rights while demurring on questions about her personal life.

But perhaps her insistence on privacy is part of what has ruffled the feathers of those who find Watson an insincere feminist spokeswoman, provoking questions about the degree to which it is part of a calculated brand.

In addition, there is Watson’s inescapable privilege – even setting aside the great wealth she has acquired in her acting career. Then there’s the nature of the “He For She” campaign she spearheaded on behalf of the UN – appealing to men to support women’s rights, arguably undermining the work of many feminists by implying that their efforts are inadequate without masculine endorsement.

It’s hardly Watson’s fault that she is who she is and she frequently notes her privilege. But it’s hard not to consider that Watson’s qualifications for her role as a bridge-builder between men and feminism included the fact that she’s a young and beautiful, incredibly famous white woman with a cut-glass accent. A telegenic British girl next door – if you lived in a really good catchment area.

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Watson has defended herself against accusations that she is a so-called “white feminist”. When she received blowback for a 2014 interview with the writer and actress Tavi Gevinson, in which Watson described feeling “conflicted” about the sexuality portrayed in Beyoncé’s work – she went on to conclude that the singer was “making her sexuality empowering because it was her choice” – Watson argued that she was working to use her platform to shine a light on the less privileged.

In many respects, playing Belle in Beauty and the Beast itself seems a choice that’s incongruous with Watson’s philosophies. It is, after all, a tale about a young woman who is entrapped by a wealthy but antisocial male creature with whom, in time, she falls in love. When questioned, Watson has insisted it’s a feminist film – Belle is good at inventing things and in the early stages of the film she objects volubly to the Beast’s cruel behaviour. But ultimately, it’s a stretch to embrace a Stockholm Syndrome narrative as a romantic one.

One would have to conclude that Watson is no radical: her feminism is essentially a conservative one, compatible with the bureaucracy of the UN and the requirements of a Hollywood career. Her “tits” are then not irrelevant to conversations about feminism because she had gone to great lengths to represent herself as a feminist leader. She could have cited the photograph as a case of feminism in action, of a woman taking agency over her own sexuality, but her dismissal of it being part of the conversation doesn’t sit that easily with her progressive credentials.

Most people have the good fortune not to have the thing they did when they were nine become so all-defining. Like her Harry Potter co-stars, Emma Watson’s youthful fame locked her on a path that it has proved hard to deviate from. To so many filmgoers, her face will forever be that of Hermione Granger and perhaps for this reason and for the reason that she became the character when she was so young, Watson may be forgiven for so often embodying Hermione’s attributes – a tremendous intellect that can sometimes be a bit know-all; a bravery that can sometimes move so quickly that it doesn’t quite account for other people.

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If you watch Watson closely in some scenes from the first Potter film, you can see that she is mouthing the lines of her co-stars: “I really wanted to do my job well,” she explained in a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, “and I kind of overdid it.” The public face of Emma Watson has always been one that aims to please, if not overachieve, and her surprise at the negative reaction to her Vanity Fair photo may suggest that she has not yet worked out how to deal with anything short of approval. But though she may have been in the public eye for nearly two decades – she is, after all, just 26 – she has some growing up to do. Then again, don’t we all?

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THE WATSON FILE

Born Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson, 15 April 1990, Paris. Raised in Oxfordshire. English degree from Brown University; UN women’s goodwill ambassador.

Best of times Being cast, in 2001, as Hermione in the first Harry Potter film – and going on to star in the series – despite having no professional acting experience.

Worst of times Accused of hypocrisy for criticising Beyoncé’s sexualised music videos, only later to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair in a photoshoot that partly exposes her breasts.

What she says “Feminism is about giving women choice. Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality.”

What others say “It’s refreshing to see her vigorous embrace of feminism, which Watson defines as ‘the theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes’. And apparently she lives by it.” Jill Abramson, former New York Times editor