After the final Harry Potter film, she took on a supporting role in My Week with Marilyn (2011), before starring as Sam, a flirtatious, free-spirited student in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), to critical success.

Further acclaim came from portraying Alexis Neiers in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013) and the titular character's adoptive daughter in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah (2014).

[13] By age ten, Watson had performed in Stagecoach productions and school plays including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince,[14] but she had never acted professionally prior to the Harry Potter series.

[7][16][17] Watson took a gap year after finishing secondary school,[18] to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Parts 1 & 2 beginning in February 2009,[19] but asserted that she intended to continue her studies[20] and later confirmed she had chosen Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

[21] In March 2011, after 18 months at the university, Watson announced she was deferring her course for "a semester or two",[22] though she attended Worcester College, Oxford during the 2011–12 academic year as part of the Visiting Student Programme.

[23][24] In a 2014 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Watson said just before graduation that it took five years to finish her degree instead of four because, owing to her acting work, she "ended up taking two full semesters off".

[54] As the fame of the actress and the series continued to rise, Watson and her Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on 9 July 2007.

[56] Prior to the release of Order of the Phoenix, the future of the Harry Potter series was in jeopardy, as all three lead actors were hesitant to sign on to continue their roles for the final installments.

[72] With the lead actors in their late teens, critics were increasingly willing to review them on the same level as the rest of the franchise's all-star cast, which the Los Angeles Times described as "a comprehensive guide to contemporary UK acting".

[73] The Washington Post felt Watson had given "[her] most charming performance to date",[74] while The Daily Telegraph described the lead actors as "newly liberated and energised, eager to give all they have to what's left of the series".

[81] In her first post-Harry Potter film, Watson appeared in My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Lucy, a wardrobe assistant who briefly dates protagonist Colin Clark, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne.

[100] Watson joined Judi Dench, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Leigh, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Mark Ruffalo as recipients of the 2014 Britannia Awards, presented on 30 October in Los Angeles.

[101] Watson starred in two 2015 releases, the thrillers Colonia, opposite Daniel Brühl and Michael Nyqvist;[102] and Regression by Alejandro Amenábar, alongside Ethan Hawke and her Harry Potter co-star David Thewlis.

[113] The film garnered positive reviews; Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times thought her performance was "all pluck and spunk and sass and smarts and fierce independence as Belle".

[111] In the same year, she starred opposite Tom Hanks in the film adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel The Circle as Mae Holland, who begins working at a powerful tech corporation and enters a perilous situation concerning surveillance and freedom.

[117] In 2019, Watson starred as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, and Meryl Streep.

[136] Watson worked as a creative adviser for the company to create a spring line of clothing, which was released in February 2010;[136][137] the range featured styles inspired by southern France and London.

[137][138] The collection, described by The Times as "very clever" despite their "quiet hope that [she] would become tangled at the first hemp-woven hurdle",[139] was widely publicised in magazines such as Teen Vogue,[140] Cosmopolitan, and People.

[154] Watson stated she "hope[d] to influence decisions that will impact future generations and the world that we leave them" and was "extremely excited" to collaborate with the Kering Foundation as part of their women's rights work and looked forward to making a difference "behind the scenes".

[163] That September, an admittedly nervous Watson[159] delivered an address at UN Headquarters in New York City to launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which aims to urge men to advocate for gender equality.

In that speech she said she began questioning gender-based assumptions at age eight when she was called "bossy", a trait she has attributed to her being a "perfectionist",[164] whilst boys were not, and at 14 when she was "sexualised by certain elements of the media".

For its recap, former New York Times editor Jill Abramson noted Watson's "gutsy, smart take on feminism" and called her effort to get men involved "refreshing".

[190] In the same year, she joined a G7 gender equality advisory group convened by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to "call on G7 to make political and economic advances for women within their own countries" as well as a "centerpiece of foreign policy".

[194] In July 2020, she partnered with Lodge and the WOW Foundation to spearhead a project reimagining the London Underground Map, renaming the 270 stops to spotlight women and non-binary people who have shaped the city's history.

[195] Watson was among the 400 signatories in a letter calling for the UK government to include women in "decision-making roles" at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

[198] More than forty people, including Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Miriam Margolyes, Gael García Bernal, Peter Capaldi, Maxine Peake, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Coogan and Charles Dance, supported Watson in a letter organised by Artists for Palestine UK.

[204] Her impact on teenage girls' view of women's rights has been referred to as the "Emma Watson effect", with respondents from a National Citizen Service survey stating that her work in activism had inspired them to label themselves feminists.

Steinem has described her as "way more like a real person than a movie star", while author bell hooks considers her to be part of "a very different, new breed [of actors] who are interested in being whole and having a holistic life, as opposed to being identified with just wealth and fame.

"[111] Watson's character in Harry Potter has had a significant impact on pop culture; the actress has commented, "I have met fans [with] my face tattooed on their bod[ies].

Watson has been the subject of substantial media attention since the beginning of her career; on her eighteenth birthday she was photographed by paparazzi attempting to take pictures up her skirt, and she has been victim of numerous stalking threats.