Harry Potter actress Emma Watson has paid tribute to her late co-star Dame Maggie Smith after her tragic passing at age 89.

The wizarding world has lost another legend, and fans have been remembering the life and career of Smith for the past 24 hours.

Smith’s sons shared on September 27 that the Downton Abbey actress passed away in hospital, and what soon followed was a mass of tributes online from celebrities and fans alike.

Now Watson has shared her own heartbreak and loss of the co-star she had the pleasure of working with for a decade.

The 34-year-old took to her Instagram Stories to share what seemed to be a behind-the-scenes photo of herself and Smith during the filming of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Dame Maggie Smith and Emma Watson spent a decade together for the film franchise (Warner Bros)

The picture is incredibly sweet and shows Smith placing her hand on Watson’s face as the young actress smiles.

She wrote on her Stories: “When I was younger I had no idea of Maggie’s legend – the woman I was fortunate enough to share space with.

“It is only as I’ve become an adult that I’ve come to appreciate that I shared the screen with a true definition of greatness.”

The two starred together in the wizarding franchise from 2001 until 2011, as Hermione Granger and Professor Minerva McGonagall respectively.

Watson continued: “She was real, honest, funny and self-honouring. Maggie, there were a lot of male professors and by God you held your own.

“Thank you for all of your kindness. I’ll miss you.”

Emma Watson’s tribute (Instagram/@emmawatson)

Watson wasn’t the only Harry Potter star to come forward with a touching tribute in light of the sad news.

Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter throughout franchise, told Variety in a statement: “The first time I met Maggie Smith I was nine years old and we were reading through scenes for David Copperfield, which was my first job.

“I knew virtually nothing about her other than that my parents were awestruck at the fact that I would be working with her.

“The other thing I knew about her was that she was a Dame, so the first thing I asked her when we met was ‘would you like me to call you Dame?’ at which she laughed and said something to the effect of ‘don’t be ridiculous!’

Watson paid tribute to her late co-star (Dave Benett/Getty Images for Violet Films)

“I remember feeling nervous to meet her and then her putting me immediately at ease. She was incredibly kind to me on that shoot, and then I was lucky enough to go on working with her for another 10 years on the Harry Potter films.”

The actor concluded: “I will always consider myself amazingly lucky to have been able to work with her, and to spend time around her on set.

“The word legend is overused but if it applies to anyone in our industry then it applies to her. Thank you Maggie.”

Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley throughout the eight films, went on to update his Instagram profile picture to an image of Smith and himself as a tribute.

When it comes to films like This is The End, most actors have a fairly good idea of what they’re signing up for.

Whether it be Channing Tatum in a gimp suit, the numerous shot at every single actor’s career with them playing themselves, or just one of the many, many weird scenes in the film, the actors were pushed to their limits of comfort comedically.

For those who live under a rock, This is The End follows a group of Hollywood celebrities, all of whom are playing heightened versions of themselves.

James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, and Danny McBride star in the film, and try to survive the end of the world.

From Rogen and his fellow Superbad co–creator Evan Goldberg, the film has developed a cult following and managed to rake in over $125 million when it came out in 2013.

One actor who didn’t quite enjoy the male-focused and sometimes crude humour of the film, however, was Emma Watson.

Watson, who did make a small appearance in the film, walked off the set of the film, a move which Seth Rogen later said she was right to do.

Watson in This is The End (Sony Pictures)

The Harry Potter actor reportedly refused to film a scene involving Channing Tatum in a gimp mask being walked on a chain by a now cannibalistic Danny McBride.

Whilst unclear what the scene involving Watson would have entailed, a final version of this did end up making the film without her in it.

Rogen said in an interview with GQ in 2021: “I mean, I don’t look back on that and think: ‘How dare she do that?’ You know?

“I think sometimes when you read something, when it comes to life, it doesn’t seem to be what you thought it was.

“But it was not some terrible ending to our relationship. She came back the next day to say goodbye.

The pair at the films premiere (Alberto E Rodriguez via Getty Images)

“She helped promote the film.

“No hard feelings and I couldn’t be happier with how the film turned out in the end.”

“She was probably right. It was probably funnier the way we ended up doing it.”

The film is fairly batsh*t, so it is relatively shocking that they got all the celebrities they did to agree to it.

In previous interviews, Evan Goldberg said he made it a goal of his to get actors to say ‘no’ on set, and the only holdouts throughout filming was James Franco and Seth Rogen.

Emma Watson once revealed that everyone wanted to be on set to witness her ‘incest’ scene during filming for the Harry Potter film franchise.

The actress even went as far as labelling it as ‘the most horrible thing’ she’d ever had to do.

While filming the final instalment of the famous wizarding movie series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Hermione Granger – played by Watson – had to get close with another character.

Harry Potter fans knew that the scene was a long time coming, but the experience was completely different for the two actors involved.

Watson spoke up during an interview at the time, revealing what it was like to have a long romantic kiss with Rupert Grint, who played her on-screen best friend Ron Weasley.

She admitted that the actor was like a brother to her, though it is good to note that the two don’t actually have any kind of relation – but this didn’t alleviate any of the weirdness for the actors.

Watson told Jonathan Ross back in 2012: “We did the kiss two weeks ago, and it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever had to do.

The pair felt weird and awkward while filming the intimate scene. (Warner Bros.)

“Not because Rupert isn’t lovely, and there are millions of girls out there who would probably chop their left arm off to kiss him, but it just felt like incest. That’s the only way I can describe it.

“The great thing about kissing is that you close your eyes, so it was fine when I was actually kissing him because I had my eyes closed. So I could not think about the fact that it was him.

“The worst bit is when we had to open our eyes and look at each other because then it was just like, and then we couldn’t keep going.”

Speaking during the more recent HBO reunion special, Return To Hogwarts – which aired a decade later in 2022 – Watson sat down with her former co-star to look back at that time.

And it seemed that her feelings towards their kiss hadn’t changed a bit.

“Obviously us kissing was the most horrifying thing either of us have ever had to go through”, she said, to which Grint agreed with a simple, and rather awkward, “Yeah.”

The pair reunited during the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter film. (HBO Max)

Watson then revealed that the scene ‘was meant to be this dramatic makeout, but we [her and Rupert] just kept laughing’.

She then added that that the kiss ‘felt wrong on every level’, because her, Grint and Daniel Radcliffe ‘are so much siblings’.

Joining the pair for a chat, Radcliffe, who famously played the titular role in the franchise, admitted that he didn’t really help things at the time.

By his own admission he was a bit of a ‘d**k’ about the whole thing.

“I did not make this better, because I’ve been told significantly that I was just being an absolute d**k about this and was like, ‘I’m gonna come on set and watch you guys kiss,'” he recalled. “I’m sorry about that, guys.”

Watson then added: “Everyone wanted to be on set for it. ‘Cause everyone was like, ‘This is gonna be good, guys’.”

Emma Watson may have appeared in her most recent film back in 2019, but she has been quite busy since then.

The Harry Potter star was last seen on the big screen in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women released four years ago and starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen and Timothée Chalamet.

While acting doesn’t seem to be part of Watson‘s plans at the moment, the actor and activist is going through an ‘exciting’ phase, as she revealed in a recent interview.

During a Vogue ‘What’s in my bag’ video segment, Watson admitted she carries a tarot deck with her when she travels for a quick daily reading. Gifted to her by a friend, the classic tarot deck allowed Watson to do a live reading on camera, learning about what the future has in store for her.

The star pulled the world card, reading its meaning on her phone.

“The world represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning,” she read aloud.

“It is an indicator of a major and inexorable change of tectonic breadth so it stands for achievement, fulfilment, possibilities and potentially successful conclusions.”

Reflecting on the card, Watson explained: “I have been sowing a lot of seeds over the last four or five years.

Vogue

“You can’t always be in the reaping stage or the harvest stage in life. Life has seasons.

“For me, the card speaks about a kind of ripeness, things coming to fruition. Exciting.”

This month, Watson looked back on her acting career, saying she felt ‘caged’.

“The thing I found really hard was that I had to go out and sell something that I really didn’t have very much control over,” she told Financial Times.

“It was very difficult to have to be the face and the spokesperson for things where I didn’t get to be involved in the process.”

Speaking about returning to acting, Watson reassured fans, saying it is definitely a possibility, but she wants to wait for the right project.

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

“But I’m happy to sit and wait for the next right thing. I love what I do,” she explained.

“It’s finding a way to do it where I don’t have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don’t want to switch into robot mode anymore. Does that make sense?”

In the meantime, Watson has launched a wine-inspired gin with her brother Alex, called Renais.

She also stepped behind the camera to direct a short movie to promote a new Prada fragrance, teasing that wasn’t the last time we’ll see her direct.