Perks role a fantasy for Watson

Emma Watson has admitted it felt "pretty exotic" playing a high school student in her new movie.

The British actress, who grew up in the public eye thanks to her Harry Potter fame, plays an American teen who's part of a clique of hip outsiders at a Pittsburgh school in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and said it gave her a taste of a whole different life.

"It felt pretty exotic to me. It really did. It was a very voyeuristic experience," Emma said at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie was screened.

"Getting to go to Friday night football and Olive Garden, school dances and all of that stuff. That was really another world to me."

Emma also revealed that growing up in a bubble of celebrity has left her feeling like a kid when it comes to many things.

"There are some parts of me that feel very old, and then there are other parts of me that are, like, I have a sense of my own arrested development," she said.

"There are some parts of me right now that are probably going through adolescence."

After a decade as Harry Potter character Hermione, Emma aims to give her fans a taste of what she can do outside the world of witches and wizards.

"I hope what they can see is that I am able to transform, that there are other sides of me that perhaps they haven't seen yet, and that they might allow me a little bit of room," she said.

"I mean, just doing American really is different. People have said to me that they keep forgetting it's me when they see the movie, which for me is more than enough. That's a success in itself for me, really."