Emma Watson: No Taking Pictures With Fans

Eonline.com: Emma Watson has drawn a line in the sand.

Famous for more than half her life, the 26-year-old actress covers Vanity Fair's March 2017 issue. In the magazine's profile, Watson tells Derek Blasberg how she came into her own after the Harry Potter films ended six years ago—and explains why she's no longer afraid to say "no."

"I've been doing this since I was 10 or 11, and I've often thought, 'I'm so wrong for this job because I'm too serious; I'm a pain in the ass; I'm difficult; I don't fit,'" says Watson, who was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in the summer of 2014. "But as I've got older, I've realized, 'No! Taking on those battles, the smaller ones and the bigger ones, is who I am.'"

As the Harry Potter series was winding down, Watson began to think about what really mattered—and what she wanted to do next. "I'd walk down the red carpet and go into the bathroom. I had on so much makeup and these big, fluffy, full-on dresses. I'd put my hands on the sink and look at myself in the mirror and say, 'Who is this?'" the actress recalls. "I didn't connect with the person who was looking back at me, and that was a very unsettling feeling."

When she enrolled at Brown University in 2009, Watson considered quitting acting altogether. "I was finding this fame thing was getting to a point of no return. I sensed if this was something I was ever going to step away from it was now or never," she recalls. By the time she reached adulthood, she tells her friend, "It dawned on me that this is what you're really signing up for."

It's part of the reason Watson no longer takes selfies with fans (outside of premieres and red carpet events). "For me, it's the difference between being able to have a life and not. If someone takes a photograph of me and posts it, within two seconds they've created a marker of exactly where I am within 10 meters. They can see what I'm wearing and who I'm with. I just can't give that tracking data," Watson explains. Instead, she'll often offer her time. "I'll say, 'I will sit here and answer every single Harry Potter fandom question you have but I just can't do a picture.' I have to carefully pick and choose my moment to interact. When am I a celebrity sighting versus when am I going to make someone's freakin' week? Children I don't say no to, for example."