Emma leaving the 2011 Elle Style Awards

Emma Watson made her big-screen debut in 2001's box-office smash Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, bringing to life Hermione Granger, friend to the famous protagonist Harry Potter of J.K. Rowling's children's novel. Born in Paris, where she lived for the first five years of her life, Watson acted only in school plays before breaking into Hollywood with this film, but her performance skills had been honed through dancing, singing, and poetry recitals, the latter of which she had already received recognition for oleh the age of seven. In the years following that blockbuster, she reprised her role alongside co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint for the subsequent beloved Harry Potter films. A self-avowed serious student at an all-girls school in Oxford, England, Watson signed on for the final two installments of the series, but decided to temporarily put further project offers aside to focus on her studies.