Toronto — After playing brainy Hermione Granger for 11 years, Emma Watson’s first major post-Potter role is that of a Pittsburgh teenager named Sam

In Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which lands in Cleveland Friday.

“If you had said to me that the first big movie for me after Harry Potter would be an American high school movie

I would have been like, ‘No, that’s not happening. Never in a million years,’ ” said Watson.

Completely lovely, super polite and petite, in a Jason Wu crystal embellished top and peplum skirt, she’s curled up on a couch playing with her toes as she talks.

“But then I read Steve’s script and it spoke to me. It might have been the line ‘We accept the love we think we deserve.’ I also thought Sam was such a beautiful, unique, cool girl.”

At 22, Watson is much in demand, on the cover of glossy magazines and in the heated spotlight of red carpet cameras. Her role in “Perks” is a fun-loving but grounded suburban girl, a senior who befriends a wayward freshman played by Logan Lerman.

She’s sitting in a suite at the Trump Toronto Hotel, in town for the premiere of her new movie in the Toronto International Film Festival. At the other end of the couch is Chbosky (pronounced sha-bos-key), who adapted his best-selling novel and directed the film.

“Emma flew into Los Angeles and met with all the studios,” he said. “She had a lot of options, and this was the film she decided to make.”

“Perks,” which also stars Paul Rudd, Dylan McDermott and Ezra Miller, nicely avoids the typical teen and high school movie cliches. “To me it’s very easy to avoid cliches if you are actually encouraging people to be human,” said Chbosky. “I wasn’t going to make yet another movie about young people where grown ups are treated with disrespect.”

While filming in Pittsburgh, Watson ate at Primanti’s, King’s, and a mall food court, picking up pieces of Americana, and she hung out in cars blaring loud music. Six sessions with a voice coach helped the British actress nail an American accent. At one point her character stands up dangerously in the back of a pick-up truck as her friends zoom through the Fort Pitt Tunnel. It called for a stunt double, but it’s actually Watson in the film.

“That was me 100 percent,” she said. “How could I miss out on that? It was so awesome, like a shot of adrenaline. I mean, yeah, it was partly terrifying, partly beautiful and amazing.”

After Toronto, she was rushing to New York to continue shooting “Noah” with Russel Crowe and Anthony Hopkins. Since “Perks,” she has also completed Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring,” and Seth Rogen’s “The End of the World,” both due out next year. Because Watson’s teen years were dominated by Hogwarts, she never went to high school, but she is currently studying at Brown University, between films, and hopes to get her degree next summer.

The line that grabbed Watson when she read the script, and a key point in both novel and film, is the one about how so many of us end up in bad relationships: “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

It carried meaning for both writer and actress.

“I wrote the line after I went through a bad breakup and, sadly, it took me a good ten years to apply it to my romantic life,” said Chbosky. “Then I met my wife and now I live it every day with my wife and daughter.”

The line had a profound affect on Watson. And as she eloquently speaks, her heartfelt words slap you in the face and remind you why she is one of the most sought-after young performers.

“I had this very Shakespearean attitude towards love. I thought that the course of true love never did run smooth and I thought pain and love very much went hand in hand, and it kind of had to be this Romeo and Juliet sort of drama-filled, excruciating thing,” she said.

“Then Steve comes along and goes, ‘No-no-no-no-no. You’ve missed something here. Love is supposed to be awesome. You can expect and hope for the best, and that people will be there to take care of you and be kind to you and meet your needs.’ This was just a revelation to me. I had thought you were slightly doomed, that there was a Cupid up there that fired his arrow at random and you didn’t get a say. So the idea that I got to get some quality control? It gave me such a sense of empowerment and ownership over my own life and relationships.”

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Source: USA Today