Famous for playing Hermione in all eight Harry Potter movies, Emma Watson has also starred in an eclectic range of other films. She’s been biblical with Russell Crowe, the beauty with Luke Evans’s beast, and a hindrance to Tom Hanks and The Circle. She is also a model, activist, and one of the most influential females in the world — keen to fight for gender equality. With all of that off-screen work, it’s a blessing that she continues to make movies.
Here are all of her big screen performances ranked!
10. This Is The End (2013)
This Is The End is an apocalyptic comedy. James Franco and a group of famous friends (cast as exaggerated versions of their real selves) are enjoying a wild, celebrity house party. Blue lights start to beam people up all over the city, and Franco and friends are left to survive the mass hysteria, earthquakes, monsters, and each other.
A completely crazy movie that sees actors making a mockery of themselves while offering us to laugh at them. Emma Watson does only appear briefly and that’s why we started the list with this movie. Breaking in on Franco’s house, wielding an axe, and armed with some uncharacteristic swear words, she demands sanctuary from the evils outside. Laughs are plenty, but there was a clear shortfall in female roles, Emma Watson’s being the most notable, and obviously the best!
9. My Week with Marilyn (2011)
Set against the backdrop of the 1957 movie, The Prince and the Showgirl, My Week with Marilyn stars Michelle Williams as the eponymous, blonde bombshell. Marilyn is in London filming her new movie, struggling with the concept of character, on and off-screen, and still breaking the hearts of anyone who becomes infatuated with her. That includes Colin Clark, (Eddie Redmayne) who plays an all-too-eager, on set, film student.
Michelle Williams is magnificent and was rightly nominated an Academy Award for best actress. Emma Watson features as Lucy, the fleeting love interest of Colin, who can only try to win the affections of a man that is infatuated with the most famous woman in the world. Brilliantly shot, capturing the bygone era of cinema, My Week with Marilyn may be for an older generation, but it’s also for lovers of cinema and great performances, no matter how small.
8. The Bling Ring (2013)
Based on true events, a group of fame and fortune-obsessed, teenagers undergo a crime spree across Hollywood. Known, posthumously, as The Bling Ring, they track down the whereabouts of celebrities so that they can burglarize their unoccupied homes in the name of high-end fashion.
Cool, stylish, edgy, and with a thumping soundtrack, Sofia Coppola’s directorial vision completely overshadows a story that has very little plot. The ensemble cast keeps the whole tone of desperation and the desire to live the life of fame, without ever earning it, a constant throughout the movie. Emma Watson plays Nicki, a homeschooled, delinquent that feels entitlement is her right. She plays sexy, selfish, and sadly a character that (although satirical) is based on reality. A massive leap in a different direction for our young Hermione.
7. The Circle (2017)
The biggest tech company in the world, run by CEO, Bailey (Tom Hanks) hires Mae (Emma Watson) for her dream job. Bailey’s vision is that knowing and seeing everything can only make the world a better place. When Mae is asked to go fully transparent — constantly filmed and streamed online for the world to see — morality, ethics, and her very life are unavoidably changed. Bailey’s vision isn’t quite so clear.
Watson keeps a dramatic and focused standard throughout, and she builds a comfortable amount of tension that leads nicely to the climactic showdown with Bailey. It’s not a dystopia or a utopia, more of a reflection of our current society in a pool of sulfuric acid. It may look okay on the surface, just don’t go for a swim. However, you can enjoy The Circle 100 per cent, it’s not real … yet.
6. Regression (2015)
Regression is one of those ‘almost everything’ movies: horror, mystery, drama, and psychological thriller. Detective Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke) and Professor Kenneth Raines (David Thewlis) investigate the sexual abuse of Angela Gray (Emma Watson) committed by her father. Using recovered-memory therapy, the Professor starts to uncover more than just abuse. A shadowy underworld of cultist and satanic ritual is unearthed.
Bathed in blues and greys, Regression looks like how we are supposed to feel. (Fans of Ozark might have the edge on thematic colouring, and will no doubt be nodding right now.) Set in the 1990s in a time when paranoia of cults was widespread, Regression is a much better movie than people gave it credit for. Watson and Hawke both give alluringly dark performances, echoing the subject. It’s moody, hugely atmospheric, and massively understated.
5. Colonia (2015)
It’s the 1973 Chilean military coup. Lena (Emma Watson) and boyfriend Daniel (Daniel Brühl) are caught in the melee. Daniel is arrested and taken away by the secret police. Lena tracks him down to an isolated, charitable mission run by holy man Paul Schäfer (Michael Nyqvist). She joins the mission in an attempt to rescue Daniel, but she finds out, all too late, that the mission is really a notorious cult, led by a man that is far from holy.
Inspired by real-life events, Colonia (The Colony, in the UK) is a claustrophobic, escape-style movie. Watson plays the reserved rescuer, fitting in, biding her time, and patiently waiting to make the move to escape with Daniel. With dark undertones and connotations of abuse, the story explores the misuse of power within an organization, mirroring the backdrop of the government coup. Will they escape and blow the lid on everything?
4. Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Disney’s live action blockbuster is full of grandiose sets, magical CGI, and Emma Watson singing. Yes she did, and that’s why it’s at number four. It’s a timeless story of a prince that is cursed to live life as a beast, unless he can find love, which just might be with a girl he holds prisoner.
Watson leads an all-star cast, some lending their many voices to the animated staff that dwell in the Beast’s castle. Her on-screen sympathy for a CGI beast should be commended, which was never going to be an easy job to pull off. Beauty and the Beast isn’t original, but it’s an epically, scaled-up, modernized retelling that is a true success, the most expensive musical ever made, and the highest grossing live-action musical ever.
3. Little Women (2019)
A period drama set in the 19th century. Little Women highlights the social inequalities of the men and women living in Concord, Massachusetts. It centers on four sisters whose big ideas are overridden by society’s pressure to crush dreams and create a world where women’s lives are merely for marrying rich men.
It does its best to ‘open eyes’ on equality, but by being as charming as a family movie can be. Emma Watson plays Margaret "Meg" March, who marries for love not money and is socially ignored by her rich auntie (Meryl Streep) for doing so. Her sister, Josephine (Saoirse Ronan), a budding writer, also finds out first-hand what men think of her, and her writing. Charming and warm, with contrasting moments of cold sadness and loss, this is one of Watson’s best performances.
2. Noah (2014)
The bible story of Noah’s ark, reimagined and given a contemporary spin, sees Noah (Russell Crowe), accompanied by the last remaining fallen angels, build the boat that will save earth’s animals. Ray Winstone plays Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain, and all-round bad guy, who wants to take control of the ark and the only means to escape the coming flood.
A great story with fresh vision. Crowe is broodingly dominant as God’s man on earth, believable with every harsh decision that he makes. Emma Watson plays Ila, a girl rescued by Noah and taken in by Noah’s family, who aboard the escaping ark announces her pregnancy. If it’s a boy, Noah must carry out God’s will: all mankind must be cleansed. Will Ila be able to stop him from making his hardest decision to date? Even the climactic battle between fallen angels and Tubal-cain’s army are outweighed by Crowe’s and Watson’s final, traumatic stand-off.
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming-of-age drama based on the eponymous novel by Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote and directed the movie. Charlie (Logan Lerman) is a wallflower who socially fears becoming part of society. With the help of Sam (Emma Watson) and her stepbrother Patrick (Ezra Miller) Charlie discovers friendship, music, and realization that he does exist. However, there is a dark reason why Charlie is so introverted.
Chbosky got everything correct, down to finding the right actors to play his characters. Exploring teenage sexuality, abuse, and relationships can be a perilous path for any writer, but Chbosky absolutely nails it. It deservedly gets the number one spot for all of its honesty, it's a perfectly executed story, dense with plot, and to top it off it’s Emma Watson’s best performance so far.