Emma Watson's Real Name: Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson

Quick answer: Emma Watson's full name is Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson. She was born on April 15, 1990, in Paris, France, to English parents. She is best known as Hermione Granger in the eight Harry Potter films (2001–11) and as an advocate for gender equality. She acts under her birth name (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts give her name "in full" as Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson. The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Watson, Emma, 1990-" and cites a 2014 source: "born Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson, April 15, 1990 in Paris, France." One older LOC note gave Oxfordshire as her birthplace, but later sources and Britannica give Paris. Oxfordshire is where she grew up.

Britannica says her parents, Chris Watson and Jacqueline Luesby, are both lawyers. After they divorced, she and her brother moved with their mother to Oxfordshire, England. LOC adds that she lived in Paris until about age five. As a child she took acting and singing classes and appeared in school plays. Her father had read her the Harry Potter books.

Career highlights

In 1999 the Harry Potter producers searched English schools for child actors and photographed students at hers. After eight auditions she won the role of Hermione in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), when she was 10. She played the part through Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), when she was 21.

After the series ended she took more adult roles. She appeared in My Week with Marilyn (2011), starred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), and played against type in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013). Later films include Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014), The Colony, and The Circle. She had a major hit as Belle in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017) and played Meg March in Greta Gerwig's Little Women (2019). Britannica notes that she has not acted since Little Women and keeps a low profile.

She attended Brown University from 2009, spent a year at the University of Oxford, and graduated from Brown in 2014 with an English literature degree. In 2023 she began a master's in creative writing at Oxford. Named a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in 2014, she promoted the HeForShe campaign. She also ran the feminist book club Our Shared Shelf (2016–20) and supported Time's Up.

Name notes for searchers

Charlotte and Duerre are middle names, and Watson is her father's surname. She has no stage name. LOC lists many foreign-language spellings, such as "Emma Watsonová" in Czech, which refer to the same actress.