How Emma Watson escaped the child-star curse.

We’re all familiar with the cliches about former child stars. From Lindsey Lohan to the Corey’s, they have a tendency to, sadly, go off the rails. Fortunately, one young woman seems immune from the curse of the public eye; and Hollywood is a much better place for it.

The entire world has watched Emma Watson grow up since she was cast as Hermione Granger at the age of 9. And yet, there’s still an openness about her. She might be media trained within an inch of her life, but she has none of the plastic tackiness of a Cyrus or a Vanessa Hudgens.  Why? Well for starters, she has a tendency to say amazing things. She’s absolutely fearless about biting the hand that feeds her, especially when it really needs to be bitten.  For example she recently told The Sunday Times:

“With airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can project an unobtainable image that’s dangerously unhealthy. I’m excited about the ageing process. I’m more interested in women who aren’t perfect. They’re more compelling.”

And she practices what she preaches. When she had control of MTV’s Twitter,  she posted a pre-red carpet photograph  of herself and explained frankly “I did NOT wake up like this.” Then she shared her extensive beauty arsenal saying “Couldn’t have survived today without…”

With Emma Watson, you get this sense that she knows exactly how lucky she is but that she’s also willing to really, really fight for the ability to keep both feet on the ground.

When she was 18, with limitless possibilities, two Potter films to go and an insane amount of cash to burn she… Went to university.

She was so keen to live like a regular girl, she opted for an Ivy League American school (Brown), and when she couldn’t find the normalcy she craved, she was pretty circumspect about it. She  told W:

“Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn’t advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn’t wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.”

And yet she persisted. After taking time off to finish Harry Potter, and film The Bling Ring, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and Noah, Watson will be graduating university in a couple of months.

Emma Watson isn’t audaciously girl-next-door in the way that J-Law is, but her light, while more reserved, shines just as strong. You get the impression that she’s a complicated, thoughtful person who is dealing with the serious weirdness life has shown her in really impressive ways.

She uses her fame to promote charities. She’s auctioned off shoes, and regularly retweets good causes. Her fashion chops have been applied to supporting and designing ethical fashion. She’s spoken out about the movie industry’s bad environmental practices, stating “it’s so resource intensive, wreaking havoc and destruction in its wake.” She tries to counter the damage her career does by making the right choices in the rest of her life. Yet despite this earnestness, she’s completely hilarious.

You never get the impression Emma Watson wants to be a role model, but her insistence on doing things her own way makes her exactly the kind of woman girls should emulate.

At this point, I have to confess that none of these things are the reason I first became smitten with Emma Watson. That reason is more shallow…

The girl has the most fiercely individual, elegant, educated red carpet style of anyone ever. And you can  tell she’s involved in selecting her red carpet wardrobe.

See what I mean? Those Erdem and Oscar De La Renta gowns were both made sustainably too.

Her killer style has more to do with the fact that she’s daring and has a great eye for design than it does with her ingénue status. Emma Watson is a hot commodity in an industry obsessed with youth. But just as she herself says, it’ll be exciting to watch her ageing process. I don’t doubt she’ll teach the industry a thing or two about what it means to grow up gracefully.

Do you have a celebrity you’re smitten with? Who is it – and why?