Emma Watson Is Taking a Year Off from Acting for Activisim

Emma Watson is opening up about her decision to take off a year from acting in order to pursue her efforts with activism and achieve self-growth.

The 25-year-old actress talked with her “girl crush” bell hooks for Paper Magazine to discuss her plans.

“I’m taking a year away from acting to focus on two things, really. My own personal development is one,” Emma said. “I know that you read a book a day. My own personal task is to read a book a week, and also to read a book a month as part of my book club. I’m doing a huge amount of reading and study just on my own. I almost thought about going and doing a year of gender studies, then I realized that I was learning so much by being on the ground and just speaking with people and doing my reading. That I was learning so much on my own. I actually wanted to keep on the path that I’m on. I’m reading a lot this year, and I want to do a lot of listening.”

Rowan Blanchard is also featured in the issue chatting with Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards.

Click inside to read Rowan‘s conversation with Cecile Richards…

“If you make things like Planned Parenthood and sexual health no longer taboo or scary to talk about, I feel like that would lead to much less unwanted pregnancies with teens. But now when girls talk about these topics, they’re called ‘sluts,’ or something like that,” Rowan told Cecile during their conversation about sexual health and education. “There’s just not a way out! It’s like, if you know about your body and you’re educated about how to take care of it, you’re ‘a slut.’ And if you’re not, then you could accidentally get pregnant or something like that.”

Cecile chimed in, “Especially if you don’t feel like you have the agency to actually speak up for yourself.”

Rowan continued, “And I hope that those girls and men that don’t feel like they have a safe space to talk about it with their parents, or maybe their sex ed teacher isn’t really covering things that need to be talked about, I hope that they’re using your guys’ Internet space to answer questions that they would maybe feel embarrassed to talk about.”