'Bling Ring' Star Emma Watson's Low-Bling Life
ABC News' Amanda Keegan reports:
Hollywood "it" girl Emma Watson plays a teen thief who stole millions of dollars of clothes and jewelry from the homes of Hollywood stars like Paris Hilton in the new movie "The Bling Ring" about a real-life robbery ring.
In Watson's own real life, however, the former "Harry Potter" star says her closet is much smaller and her needs for material items are much less.
"I've got about eight pairs of shoes and that's it," Watson, 23, told the U.K.'s Radio Times in a recent interview.
The starlet's admission is a rarity among Hollywood's A-list who are rarely seen on the red carpet or even running errands in the same outfit more than once, industry experts say.
"It is very rare and very brave for her to have said this," said Merle Ginsberg of The Hollywood Reporter. "It takes the mythology and the glamour away."
Watson's admission is in stark contrast to the very movie she is promoting, "The Bling Ring," a Sofia Coppola-directed film based on a real gang of teens who broke into the home of stars while they were at public events.
Watson described Hilton's extravagance to Radio Times, something she witnessed first-hand as Hilton allowed the film's cast and crew into her California home to shoot scenes.
"She could never wear all of those clothes and half of them were brand new and still had the price tag on," Watson said. "But I suppose she just bought them to have them.
"We've all bought things on impulse but that's an entirely different thing," she said. "It's almost like consumerism as a form of kleptomania."
In her interview with Radio Times, Watson, who graces the cover of the August issue of Teen Vogue, a magazine about fashion, recognizes that describing herself as not obsessed with material items like clothes might be hard for fans to understand.
"It's easy for me to sound like a total hypocrite because, of course, I'm dressed in designer clothes right now," Watson, a student at Brown University, told Radio Times.
She also commented on the very nature of celebrity itself in today's world of reality TV and the Internet.
"There's a whole new definition to celebrity now," she said. "And I think that's why you see a lot of actors blanching at being associated with that word 'celebrity' because it's become something that isn't really associated with having a craft."