"I've had to say no to stuff that people have been gobsmacked about. I've had big directors say to me, 'What do you mean, you can't do this movie? We don't understand,'" the actress, now 21, said.

"I always hear, 'What do you mean she can't do this magazine cover?' or 'What do you mean she can't have this meeting for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?' And my agent will say, 'She's at school, sorry.'

"Yes, it's hard for me to turn down amazing opportunities. But I've been working solidly since I've been 9 years old. So for me, to have this space to learn and figure myself out a bit is obviously worth it."

[Watson] took a semester off from Brown to promote the last "Harry Potter" film, which hits screens in July, and will return to her studies in the fall — though maybe at a different campus, on an exchange program through Brown.

"On the last movie, I flew around on this crazy press tour, and then came back and tried to do my finals," she recalled. "I wasn't sleeping. And I realized, 'Oh, my God, I can't do this again.' I wasn't going to be able to get the best out of being at Brown and do justice to saying goodbye to 'Harry Potter' properly."