Emma Watson spoke about why she needed to take a break after “Harry Potter,” and why you need to make mistakes

Being a child star can’t be too easy, and growing up in the spotlight must be a unusual experience to say the least. That’s why Emma Watson says she decided she needed some time out.

Speaking to fellow actor and Hollywood star Jessica Chastain for Interview Magazine, Watson spoke about her decision to go to college after the Harry Potter franchise wrapped up it’s last instalment, and we have to say we totally understand her motives.

“People couldn’t believe it when, after Harry Potter, I was like, ‘I’m going to school.’ Essentially, I took five years out to study, doing only a few smaller projects, and, to a lot of people, it seemed like I was passing up a lot of opportunity.I received a lot of angry phone calls. ” she told Chastain in Interview. “But I needed the space to go and explore who I was, without being under the microscope. And I did a play at Brown. I did Three Sisters. I loved it. I loved working with other people my age who were figuring it out.”

Both Watson and Chastain discussed the necessity of making mistakes, and how they actually made you stronger as a human being.

Watson said.

“I was talking to a friend of mine recently, like, ‘Okay, I’ve had a really hard couple of weeks, and I just want to figure out what I’ve learned here, what the lesson is.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘You realize that you’re trying to skip the stages, right? You need to feel shitty for a day or two and be angry and upset and hurt and grieve a little bit. And then you may or may not figure out there’s a lesson in it, but you don’t get to skip ahead. You need to cry a bit and get angry. And then you can intellectualize and self-analyze.’

“I was like, ‘Damn you, friend-who-tells-me-the-truth!’

Tbh, this is SO true. You can’t move on from a mistake until you’ve fully embraced it and learned from it. As Watson says, it’s “essential.”

Meanwhile, the Beauty and the Beast star also told how she was a terrible liar. Recalling an incident where she was underage but wanted to go out with her friends.

“I’m the worst liar ever. I remember trying to get into clubs when I was just about to turn 18,” she recalled “They’d ask my age—and my friends were already in the door, it was not even a big deal—and I was like, ‘I can’t do it.’ It’s terrible. They were like, ‘You’re an actress, what’s wrong with you? Get it together, woman!’

Tbh, it seems that, like Hermione Granger, Emma Watson has always wanted to play by the rules, and it’s part of why we love her.

You can read Jessica Chastain and Emma Watson’s full interview here.

Emma Watson is set to star in the upcoming movie adaptation of Dave Eggers’ The Circle. The dystopian movie is set to hit theaters on April 28th.