Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson (born 15 April 1990) is an English actress. Known for her roles in both blockbuster and independent films, she has received several accolades, including a Young Artist Award and three MTV Movie Awards. Watson has been ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses by Forbes and Vanity Fair, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015.

Watson attended the Dragon School and trained in acting at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theater Arts. As a child, she rose to stardom after playing her first professional role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, having previously acted only in school plays. Watson made her first major foray outside the Potter franchise starring in Ballet Shoes (2007) and lending her voice to The Tale of Despereaux (2008). After the final Harry Potter film, he took on a supporting role in My Week with Marilyn (2011), before playing a flirtatious, free-spirited student named Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). Further acclaim came as Alexis Nears in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013) and the adopted daughter of the title character in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah (2014). The same year, Watson was honored by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, winning British Artist of the Year. She played Belle in the live-action musical romantic fantasy Beauty and the Beast (2017) and Meg March in Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age drama Little Women (2019).

From 2011 to 2014, Watson divided her time between working on films and continuing her education, graduating from Brown University in May 2014 with a bachelor's degree in English literature. That year, she was appointed UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch UN Women. Campaign HeForShe, which advocates for gender equality. In 2018, he helped launch Times Up UK as a founding member. Watson was appointed to a G7 advisory body on women's rights in 2019, advising leaders on foreign policy. Her modeling work has included campaigns for Burberry and Lancôme. She has lent her name to a clothing line for the sustainable brand People Tree. In 2020, she joined the board of directors of Kering, a luxury brand group, in her capacity as an advocate for sustainable fashion.

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born in Paris on 15 April 1990 to English lawyers Chris Watson and Jacqueline Lewisby. Watson lived at Maisons-Laffitte near Paris until the age of five. His parents divorced when he was young, and Watson moved to England to live with his mother in Oxfordshire, spending weekends at his father's house in London. Watson says he can speak some French, although he "Not quite" as before. After moving to Oxford with his mother and brother, he enrolled at the Dragon School, where he remained until 2003. She wanted to be an actress since the age of six.

By the age of ten, Watson had acted in stagecoach productions and school plays, including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince, but had never acted professionally before the Harry Potter series. After Dragon School, Watson moved on to Headington School in Oxford. While on the film set, he and his colleagues tutored for up to five hours a day. In June 2006, he took GCSE school exams in ten subjects, achieving eight A* and two A grades. In May 2007, he took AS Levels in English, Geography, Art and Art History. The following year, he dropped art history to pursue three A levels, receiving an A grade in each subject.

Watson took a year off after finishing secondary school, starting in February 2009 to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Parts 1 and 2, but she insisted that she wanted to continue her studies and later confirmed He chose Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In March 2011, after 18 months at the university, Watson announced that she was deferring her course for "a semester or two",  in a 2014 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, just before Watson graduated. stated that it took her five years to complete her degree instead of four because, due to her acting work, she "took two full semesters off. On 25 May 2014, she graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in English literature. In 2023, he began a Masters course in creative writing at the University of Oxford.