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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Stuart Heritage

Go quietly and get a side hustle: how to quit acting properly

Emma Watson at the 2025 Venice film festival.
Laters … Emma Watson at the 2025 Venice film festival. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

In a recent interview with Hollywood Authentic, Emma Watson described herself as “the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been”. And this is for one reason and one reason only: she isn’t an actor any more.

The last time Watson appeared on film was in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women six years ago. Since then, she has decided to lay low, largely because she considered the act of promoting her movies “soul-destroying”. And good for her; not just for refusing to strap herself to the machine, but also for slipping away so quietly that nobody had actually even noticed that she’d gone.

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