Emma Watson is best known for playing the lovable and quick-witted Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series, but that isn't all the actress is capable of. In 2019 Watson starred as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women that earned several Academy Award nominations. Two years before that she shined as Belle in Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast, and five years before that she wowed audiences with her portrayal of Sam in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
These roles pushed Watson into stardom, though her resume extends well beyond them. And whilst they might be her most popular roles, they aren't necessarily her best. From Ballet Shoes (2007) to Colonia (2015) These are some of Emma Watson's most underappreciated movies.
Ballet Shoes (2007)
At 17-years-old Watson starred in the British TV movie Ballet Shoes directed by Sandra Goldbacher. Based on the 1936 Noel Streatfeild novel of the same name, Ballet Shoes is set in 1930s London and follows three orphans raised as sisters by an eccentric explorer. These girls are Pauline (Watson), Petrova (Yasmin Paige) and Posy Fossil (Lucy Boynton). All ambitious, Pauline wishes to be an actress, Petrova, an aviator, and Posy, a ballerina. Their plan to "put their names in the history books," however, is made difficult when the family's money runs out.
Though the movie scored an impressive 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes — making it the highest-rated Emma Watson movie on the site — Ballet Shoes failed to gain mainstream attention and was largely overshadowed by Watson's fifth Harry Potter movie, The Order of the Phoenix, which was released the same year. Fans of the latter will enjoy Ballet Shoes which sees familiar faces Richard Griffiths and Gemma Jones (Vernon Dursley and Madam Pomfrey in Harry Potter) co-star as the girls' great uncle Matthew (the explorer) and a retired academic boarding with them, respectively. Fans of Little Women will also enjoy Ballet Shoes as, like Gerwig's movie, it is a coming-of-age story about sisters in which Watson has a (larger) role.
My Week With Marilyn (2014)
Based on the Colin Clark diaries The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me, and My Week with Marilyn, this movie, which takes the name of the latter, is also set in England. Directed by Simon Curtis, it follows Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) who lands a job working on the set of the 1957 Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) movie The Prince and the Showgirl starring Marilyn Monroe. Michelle Williams plays America's sweetheart who, with her husband Arthur Williams (Dougray Scott) away in Paris, takes the opportunity to spend a scandalous week with Colin in the British countryside. Here, Emma Watson plays the role of Lucy, a wardrobe assistant that Colin begins dating.
My Week with Marilyn was a critical success and both Williams and Branagh earned Academy Award nominations for their performances. Watson's role, however, is often overlooked in the movie's praise. Though she only has a small part, Watson is great at portraying the headstrong and heartbroken Lucy, and delivers one of the movie's best lines when she tells a pitiful Colin — whose affair with Marilyn goes awry — that she can't (and won't) go on a date with him because she's washing her hair that day.
Noah (2014)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky, Noah is an adventure drama that tells the biblical tale of Noah's ark. When God decides that mankind must come to an end, he tasks Noah (Russell Crowe) with a mission to build an ark for his family and a breeding pair of all animals that will protect them from an apocalyptic flood. In this movie, Jennifer Connelly plays Noah's wife, and actors Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, and Leo McHugh Carroll play Noah's three sons. Emma Watson stars as Ila, the lone survivor of a massacre, who Noah and his family take under their wing. When Ila falls in love and becomes pregnant with Booth's Shem, Noah begins to unravel as the unborn baby girls jeopardize his plan.
Though Noah isn't the best of Aronofsky, it's still worth the watch, if not for the impressive CGI than for Watson's convincing performance. Watson's Ila is the moral anchor of the movie, and it's hard not to sympathize with her character. Her standoff with Noah towards the end is particularly heartbreaking as she begs the latter to spare her babies, and if he must kill them, to at least wait until they've stopped crying.
Regression (2015)
Regression is a psychological thriller written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar. Set in Minnesota in 1990, it follows a detective (Ethan Hawke) and a psychoanalyst (David Thewlis) who use recovered-memory therapy ("the regression technique") to investigate a satanic cult and the related rape of a teenage girl. Emma Watson plays Angela Gray, the aforementioned wronged teenager whose story baffles Hawke's Bruce and Thewlis' Kenneth, and troubles her accused, amnestic father John (David Dencik).
The movie didn't perform as well as others on the list, but don't be dissuaded; whilst Regression isn't anything new, it's just as good as the average Netflix thriller and is worth watching for Watson's character alone. There is more than meets the eye with Angela Gray, as audiences discover. Regression is also another movie that features a Harry Potter co-star. Fans of The Wizarding World will recognize the movie's psychoanalyst as the iconic Remus Lupin.
Colonia (2015)
Saving the best for last, Colonia (also known as The Colony) is a criminally underrated romance drama directed by Florian Gallenberger. Set in 1973, it follows flight attendant Lena (Watson) and her journalist boyfriend Daniel (Daniel Brühl) who is abducted during a military coup in Chile. Tracking him down to the real-life, infamous Colonia Dignidad, Lena joins the organization only to discover it is a cult in which they are now both trapped. The rest of the movie sees the couple reunite to try and escape the isolated colony run by the perverted Paul Schäfer (Michael Nyqvist).
Colonia has a critics score of 29%, and an audience score of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, though its 7.1 IMDb rating is arguably fairer. The movie is a tense watch from start to finish (and beyond) and audiences who stay till the end credits will find the rundown of the real-life Colonia Dignidad as terrifying as it is interesting. Needless to say, Watson is brilliant at portraying Lena's claustrophobic nightmare and her strong chemistry with Brühl's Daniel rivals that between Ron (Ruper Grint) and Hermione.