Emma Watson recently broke her silence about her six month driving ban in the UK, for the first time since the news broke over the summer. The 35-year-old Harry Potter actress has stepped away from acting in recent years, so the infraction put the undue spotlight back onto her.
Why did Emma Watson get banned from driving?
In July 2025, it was widely reported that Watson had received a six-month driving ban after driving her blue Audi 38 mph in a 30 mph zone. The incident had occurred in Oxford the year before on July 31, 2024, where she’s been working towards her master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford since 2023.
According to the BBC, which first broke the news, Watson already had nine points on her driver’s license from previous speeding infractions when the incident occurred, and the judge added three additional points to her record. Additionally, the High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court ordered her to pay fine of £1,044.
Watson reportedly did not attend the five-minute hearing in which she was handed down the violation. Her lawyer explained to the court that she is currently a student and noted that “she is in a position to pay the fine.”
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What has Emma Watson said about her driving ban?
Watson appeared on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast on Wednesday, Sept. 24, where she opened up about the offense for the first time.
“I recently started riding a bicycle. Yes, I started riding a bicycle before my driving ban, but now it’s particularly fortuitous that I also ride a bicycle for that reason,” she confessed to the British author and podcaster with a laugh.
Watson said that she was unprepared for the incident to be covered across “mainstream news.”
“Oh my God, I was getting phone calls, like it’s on the BBC, it’s on international worldwide news,” she recalled. “I was like, my shame is everywhere.”
However, Watson explained that there was essentially a good reason why she was a bad driver.
“When you worked on movies—I don’t know if people know this—they literally will not insure you to drive yourself to work,” she told Shetty. “I’ve asked so many times. You have to be driven. It’s not a choice. Especially because they need you there down to the minute, basically, depending on what they have going on.”
“So I went from basically only driving myself on weekends or during holiday to when I became a student, driving myself all the time,” Watson continued. “I did not have the experience or skills, clearly, which I now will and do.”
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But despite the unwanted attention, Watson also noted that there was an upside to the humiliation, in that she received kind messages from strangers who assured her that she wasn’t alone.
“I think, in a funny way, what the sweetest result of it was getting so many messages from people being like, ‘It happened to me too. I feel you. This is awful. It sucks.’” she added. “Which was kind of nice in a way. ‘Do you need a lift?’ I was like, ‘Actually, yes.’”
Did Emma Watson quit acting?
Watson’s last film role was in Greta Gerwig 2019 Little Women adaptation, although she also appeared in the 2022 HBO Max special, Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.
In a 2023 interview with the Financial Times, Watson explained why she made the decision to step away from acting.
“I wasn’t very happy, if I’m being honest. I think I felt a bit caged,” she said at the time. “The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over. To stand in front of a film and have every journalist be able to say, ‘How does this align with your viewpoint?’ It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”
That said, Watson said that she will eventually act again, when the timing and project is right.
“Yes, absolutely. But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing,” she noted. “I love what I do. It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don’t want to switch into robot mode any more.”
