While filming her final scenes for the forthcoming live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast back in August, Emma Watson says she was struck by a profound moment of realisation about her career – it was exactly 15 years to the day that she landed her role in the first Harry Potter movie!

Filming wrapped for the hotly-anticipated remake back on August 21st this year, but amid the cast celebrations the date had extra significance for 25 year old Watson, as she realised that she had been cast as Hermione in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone all those years before.

Emma WatsonEmma Watson has finished filming 'Beauty and the Beast'

Speaking to BBC Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw on Monday morning (October 5th), Watson said: “It’s so weird. It’s one of those full circle moments as I did my last day on Beauty and the Beast as Belle and I was driving home and saw stuff reminding me that it was fifteen years to the day that I was cast as Hermione.”

It was the first step in an impressive career that has seen Watson star in all seven of the subsequent Potter movies, as well as acclaimed projects like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Noah. She was also appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in 2014, and has used that as a platform for advocacy work in women’s right. “It’s so crazy,” she continued, “it’s more than half of my life.”

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Watson also took the opportunity to talk about her latest project, Regression, a thriller in which she stars opposite Ethan Hawke, another former child star, and she revealed that the two of them felt a close professional connection.

“He's just such a joy to be around,” she said about the former Boyhood star. “Every day he would come into the make-up trailer playing a different instrument. Sometimes he'd rock up with a trumpet, sometimes he'd rock up with a guitar, sometimes he'd be singing. He'd always be reading something interesting. He was just really nice to be around. He was also a child actor, so it was nice. I got to talk to him a lot about what that's like.”

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