Hot Gossip: Emma Watson Is Sensible, Boring and a 'Proper Nerd'

Wonderwall, Thursday, April 23, 2009, 2:03pm (PDT)

By Kat Giantis

With Lindsay Lohan rumored to be in dire financial straits (although perhaps not dire enough to strip in Sin City), it's nice to know that some of her child-star brethren are being conservative with their cash.

Emma Watson tells Interview magazine that she hasn't exactly gone on a spending spree with the serious chunk of change she's earned playing smart, levelheaded witch Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" films.

Asked about her "first big splurge," she says, "Hmm I got myself a laptop. I took my dad to Tuscany. He works so hard, my dad, so I rang up his secretary and asked when he was free, and I booked us a holiday. What else? Oh, I got myself a car."

The prepossessing actress characteristically avoided anything ostentatious (like, say, Lindsay's porn-king bestowed Maserati) and instead settled on an environmentally friendly Prius.

"It's sensible and boring -- like me," laughs Watson, 19, who good-naturedly agrees when the interviewer points that the car is also "polite and efficient, just like you."

"Yes," she laughs, "I am the Prius of my peer group."

Emma, who was snapped shooting "The Deathly Hallows" this week with leading men Daniel "Harry" Radcliffe and Rupert "Ron" Grint ("They're like my siblings now," she says), is gearing up for college later this year, and she's leaning toward the Ivy League instead of Oxford or Cambridge.

"Here, I feel the specification is very narrow, whereas in America, you're encouraged to be broad and choose many different subjects," she explains. "For someone who has missed as much school as I have, I want to go back and discover what else there is. I always loved school -- I was a proper, proper nerd. I just want that back again."

In the meantime, Watson is getting tutored in the fine art of romance. The London Daily Mail spied her smooching financier Jay Barrymore, 27, on the "Potter" set a few days back.

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