The Subject College Co-Ed Emma Watson Had Trouble With Is Pole Dancing

Emma Watson underwent a bad girl makeover for the mag. (Mark Seliger/GQ)The sensible and studious Hermione Granger would surely roll her eyes at this.

Emma Watson, who played one of Harry Potter's best pals for a decade, spent some time indulging in a very un-Hermione-like pastime in preparation for her upcoming, more mature movie, Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring."

"I did learn to pole dance for the film, and I have a small pole dancing scene," Watson explained to British GQ. "But it's not a performance for anyone else, it's just me messing around with my friends. I took lessons."

Watson, who will be 23 on April 15, squeezed in the extra-curricular activity while studying at Oxford University. (She's a junior at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, this semester, where she plans to finish up her degree.)

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"I had this surreal experience where I was studying the modernists, writing about Virginia Woolf on Friday night, then driving to London for pole dancing classes on Saturday morning," she said with a laugh.

For those who were wondering, Watson managed to hold her own as a pole dancer — but it wasn't easy.

"I was incredibly ungraceful at first. The upper-body strength and the core strength you need to do it gracefully is crazy," she told the mag. "I take my hat off to the women who can do it. You have to be incredibly strong."