They are wondering, in the rooms Emma Watson shared at Brown University on Rhode Island, what their most famous student plans to do with her ‘things’.
A jumble of books and clothes — cream Prada pumps, suede Louboutin platforms and piles of Agnes B casual wear — remain. The girls in her dorm, who include Scout Willis, the daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, expect she will send someone to pack.
They are already saying how much they will miss Emma Watson, the unassuming star of the Harry Potter films, who bunked down in a single bed in a shared room for the past year and a half.
Height of fashion: Emma is the new face of Lancome and is currently filming an advert for them in Paris
She started studying history at the college in September 2009, and was on course to complete her degree in 2013. That has been deferred, she says just by a few terms, though many believe she won’t be back at all.
And the reason, it seems, is that Emma — 21 next month — is confident she can put the Potter films behind her and become a star in her own right.
This week, it was announced she has been anointed the face of Lancome, succeeding Julia Roberts. It is a huge role that will not only net her millions, but ensure her face is on billboards all over the world. Lancome said: ‘Emma Watson has become the icon of her generation.’
She is emerging from her shell. After a couple of years of uncertainty, Emma no longer feels crushed by her £30million wealth or embarrassed by her success.
Coming out of her shell: The actress is beginning to embrace stardom and has taken a break from her studies for more modelling and film roles
When she first found out how much money she had made, aged 18, she says she felt physically sick. It seems it has taken her all this time to get used to it.
After ten years of playing Hermione Granger and, she says, sacrificing her childhood and normality on the altar of the Warner Bros agenda, she was ready to give it all up. That, though, has changed.
She’s learning to enjoy the pleasures of success. You’ll see her taking a spa break with friends in Thailand and propping up the bar in top London clubs.
Recognition: The actress at the Elle Style Awards where she was named ‘Style Icon’ of the year
Home is a £?million pad in North London, where her Toyota Prius is proudly parked outside.
She has had cookery lessons from celebrity chef Joel Robuchon as she is tired of paying caterers for her dinner parties. It’s all rather grand.
Her friends are starting to include the glitterati, and she has shown a particular interest in making an impression on all of the more important people in fashion, such as Burberry’s Christopher Bailey and Antoine Arnault, son of LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton) boss Bernard. She’ll soon shoot a campaign for Joel Robuchon with Mario Testino.
Impact on sales: Emma’s participation in a Burberry ad campaign saw demand go up for their trench coats
One who knows her socially said that all her friends know to never mention Harry Potter. ‘She pulls a bad smell face if you even say the name,’ she said.
Come Bafta season this year, she was the most flirtatious of all the starlets, parading in a series of carefully chosen outfits, and working the room at the best parties.
Film mogul Harvey Weinstein, the man who helped to make the careers of Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett, was among those she dazzled.
‘For ten years she has been this schoolgirl in the Harry Potter films and now you see her as a woman for the first time,’ he said.
‘She has an elegance about her — she looks like Jean Shrimpton — plus she has a gift for comedy and drama, and we’re just starting to see her range. I feel we’re going to work together a lot in the future.’
At the Baftas: Emma posed with Harry Potter writer J K Rowling on the red carpet before going on to rub shoulders with fashion and film industry VIPs at after show parties
This week, her starring role in a new film is to be announced — possibly a project with Weinstein.
She has already filmed a small part in My Week With Marilyn about Marilyn Monroe, starring Michelle Williams, and from May she will be shooting the film Perks Of Being A Wallflower.
Over the summer, she will have to fit in a final hit of promotional activity for the last instalment of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows — a task which, it seems, may not fill her with delight.
For Emma has moved on. When the cast and crew held a wrap party after shooting the final set of re-shoots around Christmas, she didn’t go. Co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint did.
While the three key actors were genuinely good friends during the making of the early films, the bond seems to have loosened considerably during the last movie. Perhaps there was resentment over the way Emma took her time signing for the final two films.
Her contract came up for renewal in 2006, but while Daniel and Rupert signed for five years without a second thought, she admitted in an interview this year that she ‘agonised’ before deciding that she would, and was considering giving up being an actress.
Moved on: Emma remains friends with her Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe, left, and Rupert Grint but she didn’t attend a wrap party after the final re-shoots were filmed like they did
So why the sudden change of heart about her film career? People who know Emma say it’s simply a question of having had some time to catch her breath — she needed to get some space away from the Potter juggernaut and to decide whether she wanted a life in the public eye.
Friends say the revival of her career ambition is also partly down to the sage counsel of her father, lawyer Chris Watson.
An Oxford graduate who works at a senior level for one of the larger London firms, he has supported her every step of the way. He has often been with her on publicity junkets and film premieres around the globe. She adores him, and takes his advice on everything. Significantly, his views were the first she sought on that haircut — the pixie crop she had to celebrate the end of her Potter years.
She says:’He said: “Don’t get carried away. You’re not Audrey Hepburn yet.” But he loves it now, and so he’s eating his words.’
He and Emma’s mother Jackie were divorced in 1995. He has since remarried, to Elizabeth Green, and they have three further children, Toby and twins Nina and Lucy. Their North London home is a five-minute stroll from Emma’s.
Then and now: The young trio in the first Harry Potter film, left, and in the latest release, The Deathly Hallows
Her one financial splurge — a £1?million ski chalet in France — was made with her father in mind. He is a passionate skier.
Those who know her from the Potter days say that, even though she lived with her mother, her father’s influence was paramount.
She was, though, troubled from time to time by their ‘wringingly awful’ divorce.
And it was even whispered that her parents had opposing views on whether she should make the Deathly Hallows films at all.
‘All I can tell you is that there was a lot of unhappiness connected with the parents,’ says a Potter source.
Will she ever go back to university? She says she ‘fully intends’ to return to Brown and her academic career is ‘very important’ to her.
But there is rather a lot of cynicism about that on the Ivy League campus, where it has also been noticed that she chooses to hang out with only the wealthiest and best-connected girls.
Penchant for rock stars: With Johnny Borrell at a party in 2009, and George Craig from the band One Night Only, who she dated after they met at for a Burberry shoot
Her best friend is Scout Willis — she went to her home over New Year. She’s also close to Madison Utendahl, a glamorous young lady whose banker father is stepping out with supermodel and TV personality Tyra Banks.
Her college romance was again with someone connected to the fringes of stardom — a Spanish acting student named Rafael Cebrian, who is the son of the co-founder of El Pais newspaper.
He was also the drummer in The Monomes. It seems Emma has a weakness for rock musicians. Take her flirtation with Johnny Borrell at a Fashion Week party in 2008 or her romance last summer with George Craig, singer of pop band One Night Only.
They did Glastonbury together, and were spotted snogging in hospitality tents across the site. But it didn’t last — Emma says she is starting to wonder if her wealth is an issue.
‘I hope it doesn’t complicate relationships for me,’ she says. ‘I think it can make guys quite uncomfortable. I do have to be sensitive.’
She probably needn’t worry too much. Because the direction in which she is heading means that pretty much everyone she meets from here on will be wealthy, famous or both.
&c*py;2011 Tiffany Silverlight. All Rights R*s*rv*d.
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