The INSIDER Summary:
• Emma Watson doesn't take pictures with fans when she meets them on the street.
• She says they make it too easy for other people to track her down.
• "Harry Potter" fans tend to be more zealous than other fans.
• She sometimes makes exceptions for kids, and for people on the red carpet.
Emma Watson is one of the most famous women in the world. As the actress behind Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" movies and the forthcoming Belle in "Beauty and the Beast," she has a massive fanbase.
When Watson meets fans on the street or at events, though, she turns down requests for selfies and photos.
"If someone takes a photograph of me and posts it, within two seconds they’ve created a marker of exactly where I am within 10 meters," Watson told Vanity Fair. "They can see what I’m wearing and who I’m with. I just can’t give that tracking data."
For some people, there are exceptions: "Children I don’t say no to, for example," Watson said, because she'd "make someone’s freakin’ week."
She also sometimes takes photos on the red carpet. Her fans know she's there, anyway. At the premiere of "Beauty and the Beast" in Shanghai on February 27, she took selfies with members of the red carpet crowd.
Sometimes, Watson will offer to chat about "Harry Potter" with her fans, but they aren't even interested.
"I’ll say, 'I will sit here and answer every single Harry Potter fandom question you have but I just can’t do a picture,'" Watson said.
While other celebrities might be happy to pose for photos with their fans, Watson says hers can be extreme. "Harry Potter" was a coming-of-age phenomenon for millions of people, and those people can be obsessive. Since the film adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" premiered in 2001, she's had to fend off stalkers, according to Vanity Fair.
"I have met fans that have my face tattooed on their body. I’ve met people who used the Harry Potter books to get through cancer," Watson said. "I don’t know how to explain it, but the Harry Potter phenomenon steps into a different zone. It crosses into obsession. A big part of me coming to terms with it was accepting that this is not your average circumstances."
Watson also told Vanity Fair that privacy has become only more urgent because of social media, where everyone has a camera on their phone and the ability to share photos with thousands of people at once. She purchased her house, for example, over a Skype call and without even looking at it, because it had a paparazzi-proof entrance, according to Vanity Fair.
"People will say to me, ‘Have you spoken to Jodie Foster or Natalie Portman? They would have great advice for you on how to grow up in the limelight.’ I’m not saying it was in any way easy on them, but with social media it’s a whole new world," Watson said. "They’ve both said technology has changed the game."
Read the original article on INSIDER. Copyright 2017.Follow INSIDER on Facebook.
Follow INSIDER on Twitter.Watch: We got an exclusive tour inside Facebook's engineering office in London — here's what we saw
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufony4tNhmnKalkWLEosDSqKVmr5%2BjwW7AwKScZqiYpMGwv4ywoK2gXZuur7%2BMa2dqb11n