Emma Watson Debuts New Hairstyle While out With Boyfriend

Emma Watson has a new look. PEOPLE reports that the Harry Potter actress is sporting a new short bob after she was seen out and about in Beverly Hills with her boyfriend, Leo Robinton. The couple was grabbing a lowkey lunch, keeping in trend with their behavior for the last year of pandemic living.

While the cut is a drastic cut off her long locks, Watson is no stranger to short hair, famously rocking a pixie cut when she finished the last Harry Potter film. “I have to [cut my hair] for roles,” she told Glamour. “But if I had it my way, I would have just kept it short forever. Of course, men like long hair. There’s no two ways about it. The majority of the boys around me were like, ‘Why did you do that? That’s such an error.’ And I was like, ‘Well, honestly, I don’t really care what you think!’ I’ve never felt so confident as I did with short hair — I felt really good in my own skin.”

Once she was free from Hermione Granger, Watson admitted that she had a real yen to experiment with her look. “I was contractually obliged not to cut my hair, not to tan,” she explained to Vogue. “All the normal things girls do, I couldn’t. So when I got the chance to change my appearance, this [gesturing to her hair] is what I did.

There was speculation earlier this year that Watson was retiring from acting after The Daily Mail reported that she was stepping away from her career to focus on her relationship with Robinton. “Emma Watson has gone ‘dormant’ according to her agent,” the Mail reported. “That appears to be movie-speak for she’s ‘given up acting.’”

“Emma has gone underground, she is settling down with Leo,” a source told the Mail. “They’re laying low. Maybe she wants a family.” The couple has now settled in LA, but the tabloid claimed that during the pandemic they “secretly lived in Ibiza where she would spend mornings reading the papers over smoothies at a vegan cafe.”

However, Watson’s manager Jason Weinberg shut down those rumors quickly, releasing a statement denying that she had given up on acting. “Emma’s social media accounts are dormant but her career isn’t,” he told Entertainment Weekly. Watson was last seen in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women in 2019 and currently has not signed on to any new projects.