Emma Watson Age Beauty And The Beast

Emma Watson stars as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a live-action adaptation of the studio's animated classic directed by Bill Condon.

Today, the actor, whom most know from his role as Matthew Crowley on the hit series Downton Abbey, will make his debut as the Beast in Disney’s highly anticipated live-action flick “Beauty and the Beast.” Stevens is starring opposite Emma Watson, who plays Belle. He told ABC News there were several things he had to do to prepare for the role, including learning to dance with Watson while on stilts.

“She’s a great dancer but she was terrified of me that I was going to break her toes in these contraptions that I was wearing, ” Stevens said during an appearance on “Popcorn with Peter Travers.” “Fortunately we learned the dance on the ground. As I always say to my kids, if you think you can fly, always test it taking off from the ground. So we learned it on the ground and then worked our way up to these stilts.”

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But it’s not just stilts that help this live-action version of the Beast stand out in the film. Stevens revealed that this time the Beast will get his own musical number.

The Beast didn’t have a song in the animated film but in the stage show he did. That song didn’t work so they wrote a new one. And it’s fantastic, ” Stevens, 34, told Travers. Songster Josh Groban will lend his voice to the newly penned tune called “Evermore.”

While Disney fans are rejoicing at the release of a new princess film, Marvel Comics fans are already taking in FX’s “Legion, ” also starring Stevens. The series centers on a young man diagnosed with schizophrenia. It turns out that not only is his diagnosis wrong, he's also a mutant with incredible powers.

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Watch interviews with Ben Affleck, Denzel Washington and Natalie Portman in the latest episodes of ABC News' Popcorn With Peter Travers HERE.

He's a guy who's been told he's a paranoid schizophrenic his entire life and is certainly exhibiting a lot of these symptoms. There's lots of strange things happening to him, Stevens said. He's diagnosed as one thing, institutionalized pretty much his whole adult life, then a group of people come in and tell him something radically different.

Though the mutant world will be wild and fun like in the comics, viewers are almost invited inside his head, Stevens said about the audience experience.

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Be sure to watch the full interview above to see Stevens sharing more inside details about both of his exciting new characters.In this version, Belle is not only a bookworm but also an inventor -- she uses her inventions for everyday chores such as laundry, which in turn provides her with time to catch up on her reading. Her backstory with Maurice will also be expanded upon, as this version of the story confirms the death of her mother.

As a result of his wife's passing, Maurice is somewhat overprotective of Belle and has reservations over her dream of experiencing adventures.

Belle and Maurice are given significant backstory explaining why they moved to the village in the first place (Every morning just the same/Since the morning that we came/To this poor provincial town) and why Belle has a missing Mom. They lived in Paris until a plague killed the mother. Maurice became desperate to protect Belle and thus they moved to the small, safe village. This also provides an alternate reason for Maurice setting out in the first place; his music boxes are sold at an out-of-town market once a year.

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Belle is an intelligent, cultured woman creative enough to invent the impromptu washing machine... and this is why almost no one in the village likes her even though she's nice to everyone. (The exceptions are Père Robert, Monsieur Jean and Agatha/The Enchantress).

While Gaston is obsessed with marrying her, it's only because she is the most beautiful woman in the village; he sees her as just another prize to claim now that his Glory Days of War are over and has no respect for her as a person.

Belle truly defines herself. She is a very intelligent young woman, due to her love of books, providing her a wide vocabulary, activate imagination and open mind... she’s an endless dreamer in simple words. Belle is very confident and doesn't often listen to the others, she’s not afraid of speaking her own thoughts. She’s a very independent woman and doesn’t like to be controlled by any man. Loves to take care of people in need and frequently dreams about a life of adventure and romance. Belle is able to look past how people appear and into their hearts.

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In the film, Belle dreams of adventure, she has also stated that she also wishes for a friend who accepts her for who she really is and not for her appearance. This is because everyone in town criticizes her for doing her own thing and they do not understand why which makes her feel like she does not fit in. However, despite this, even when people gave her a hard time she never changed, but came to a better understanding of herself. This made the biggest difference when she broke the spell and charmed the Beast just by being herself.

Belle gives a fruit to a donkey. Monsieur Jean asks Belle where she is off to. Belle replies, To return this book to Père Robert... It's about two lovers in fair Verona.Emma Watson says she has made her Belle ‘the kind of woman I would want to embody as a role model’. Photograph: Laurie Sparham/PR Company Handout

She’s about to star as the heroine of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but post-Potter she has received more plaudits for her activism than her acting

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I t may seem strange that one of the most anticipated films of 2017 should be a live-action remake of a Disney cartoon about Stockholm syndrome, but Beauty and the Beast has already built up the kind of fan base that is normally reserved for rebooted sci-fi franchises and adaptations of erotic bestsellers. When the first trailer went online in November, it was viewed a record 127m times in 24 hours, beating the previous leaders in that particular field, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Fifty Shades Darker. Stranger still, 27m of those views were on the Facebook page of the film’s star, Emma Watson.

That figure might suggest that the 26-year-old who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series is now a bona fide superstar. But Watson’s celebrity status is slightly more complicated. As a Hollywood player, she isn’t going to give Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson sleepless nights, but as an actor-activist she has the kind of influence that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

For proof that Watson isn’t yet an A-lister, you just have to glance at her filmography since she hung up her Gryffindor robes. Broadly speaking, she has taken supporting roles in ensemble projects, such as Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn and Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and above-the-title roles in films that vanished without trace. Alejandro Amenábar’s repressed-memory chiller Regression didn’t recoup its $20m budget, and Colonia (AKA The Colony) pulled in a grand total of £47 in its opening weekend in the UK. Meanwhile, she turned down the title role in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, and accepted then dropped out of La La Land, thus handing Emma Stone the part that may well win her a best actress Oscar. In the years between Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast, in other words, Watson was better known for films she wasn’t in than for films she was.

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‘She is clearly not an activist of the old school’ ... Emma Watson at the Noah film premiere in New York. Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex Shutterstock

In contrast, Kristen Stewart followed her stint in the Twilight series by embracing arthouse cinema and being embraced right back: she was the first American female actor to win a César award for her performance in Clouds of Sils Maria. And Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, has grabbed every possible acting opportunity, from big-budget capers (Now You See Me 2) to indie curios (Swiss Army Man), from television (A Young Doctor’s Casebook) to theatre (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead). Compared to them, Watson is barely trying.

But there is more on her mind than acting. Having stepped away from the business to study for an English degree at Brown University in Rhode Island, she now spends as much time on feminism as she does on films. In 2014, she became a UN Women goodwill ambassador; in 2015, she was named on the Time 100 list of world’s most influential people, and last year she continued to make headlines by, for example, leaving feminist books around the London Underground system.

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None of that may appear very remarkable: Watson isn’t the first film star to double as a political activist. But few stars can have been as reassuring or inclusive in their consciousness-raising. When Angelina