Emma Watson, who was rumored to be a holdout during contract talks for the final two Harry Potter films — Half-blood Prince and Deathly Hallows — regrets that she came off as being a tough negotiator, but invites any detractors to spend a moment in her sorceress' hat. "People underestimate what a big decision this was for me," the 17-year-old says in this weekend's Parade. "This is the next three or four years of my life. Being in the spotlight and the lack of freedom are the sort of things that held me back. People will see that as ungrateful, but you never know until you've walked in someone else's shoes. I love it, and that's why I'm back, but I had to make it work for me."As for that eventual life after Potter, she ventures, "It will be the weirdest thing ever." And you have to imagine she has seen Equus.
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The image of a poster for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix posted on the IMAX website has been taken down in the wake of criticism that it was retouched to make Emma Watson's 15-year-old alter ego a wee more... curvy. According to The-Leaky-Cauldron.org, Warner Bros. has since issued a statement explaining that the poster (seen here at the London Daily Mail website) was unapproved yet "unfortunately... was accidentally posted on the IMAX website." Sounds like someone in the film's publicity department is a bit hung up on Lindsay Lohan's famous (and to this day "spellbinding") Saturday Night Live take on the character.
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This just in from Warner Bros. Pictures: "Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson will reprise the roles they have made their own: teen wizards Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, respectively, in Warner Bros. Pictures' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final two motion-picture adaptations of J.K. Rowling's best-selling book series."Watson, who was rumored to be a holdout as recently as Monday, says in a statement, "I could never let Hermione go — she is my hero! I love her too much and love what playing her has meant to me. I am excited and honoured to be finishing what I started and playing her in all seven of the films."What's Parseltongue for, "Back up the Brinks truck?"
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According to wicked, wicked online reports, Emma Watson has yet to sign on for the final two Harry Potter films — and, say some nasty rumors, will hold to that decision, even if producers were to jack up the 16-year-old's pay to £2 million (roughly $3.8 mil) a picture. "Emma doesn't want to do it anymore. She's tired of being known as 'that girl from Harry Potter,'" that redheaded kid from Harry Potter (Rupert Grint) supposedly told the U.K. tabloid News of the World. "Daniel [Radcliffe] and I are distant from her now. We don't text or talk to her when we are not filming." In a statement issued Monday morning, a Warner Bros. spokesperson maintains, "We're extremely confident that Emma will be back for films 6 and 7" — or else they'll get themselves a Gyllenhaal.EDITED to make overall tone of the blurb more Potterphile-friendly. Last thing I need is, like, a spell of Perpetual Flatulence cast on me. (Again.)
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In the first two Harry Potter films, Hogwarts' reigning diva Hermione was all bark and no bite. But all that changes in installment No. 3, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (opening Friday). You see, the wannabe witch gets to slug school bully Draco Malfoy — and it's a rather impressive jab at that! The fisticuffs mark a major turning point for Hermione, but you don't have to tell that to actress Emma Watson.
"I loved it," says the character's 14-year-old portrayer. "I loved every single second of it. Girl power!
"I would have done [the punching scene] for a whole week," she continues. "But we got it in a couple of takes. I was like, 'I want to do it again!' It was fantastic. It is a great moment. At the premiere, everybody cheered." (TV Guide Online was present at last month's world premiere in New York and can confirm that the crowd welcomed the wallop.)
But being the poster child for young female e
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