Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born on April 15, 1990, in Paris. Her parents, both British lawyers, are Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson. Her brother, Alex, was born three years later. Her parents divorced when Watson was 5, and she moved back to Oxfordshire in England with her mother and brother.

Watson attended the Stagecoach Theatre Arts school at Oxford. She studied singing, acting and dancing, and performed in school plays. Her natural instinct for acting first came out when she won a poetry competition for reciting James Reeves' "The Sea" at age 7. Watson had never acted professionally when her theater teachers suggested her to agents looking to cast an upcoming movie based on the first novel of the best-selling Harry Potter series.