Hermione Granger will always have a special place in our hearts, but make no mistake: The actress who plays her is a grown-ass woman. Emma Watson has been showing off a more adult range and style for awhile now—beginning with last year's shocking chop of her trademark long locks—and never more so than this summer, as we've seen her on the cover of Vogue, Seventeen and now the UK's Harper's Bazaar. Inside, Emma goes ultra-glam (and maybe even a little bit gothic) for a shoot that captures her transition from innocent ingenue to more daring, mature roles.
We admit it: It's a little freaky to see the "Harry Potter" actress morphing from a wholesome English rose on one page to a dark-lipsticked sultry vamp on the next... an opinion that Emma herself also shares.
"[To] let myself be powerful, sexy, all those things, it’s scary for me," she admitted, adding that even playing bad-girl dress-up for her photo shoot "felt a bit uncomfortable and awkward, it didn’t come naturally at all.”
As always, the actress' matter-of-fact attitude is seriously refreshing—seriously, how great is it when A-list celebs turn out to be smart and cool?—although we're guessing she'll get used to that womanly persona, particularly once the final film in the Potter series has faded into the background and she's no longer best-known for playing a 17 year-old witch. But don't be looking for Emma to go Full Hollywood anytime soon; she already knows that it's not for her, and her attitude about the image-obsessed L.A. lifestyle is pure sensible smackdown.
"L.A. scares the crap out of me," she said. "I feel if I have to work out four hours a day, and count the calories of everything I put in my mouth, and have Botox at 22, and obsess about how I look the whole time, I will go mad. I will absolutely lose it."Which just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the Hermione Granger role, but you can't take the Hermione out of the girl.