Here are 25 nuggets of wisdom from Emma Watson on her 25th birthday

Here are 25 of her most inspiring nuggets of wisdom to help you live your life just a little more like this incredible actress.

1. On standing out from the crowd: “Don’t feel stupid if you don’t like what everyone else pretends to love.”

2. On shunning the pressure to be a sex object: “I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing. If I do a photo-shoot, people desperately want to change me – dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that’s not me.”

3. On why she’s fighting for feminism: “I have realised that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”

4. On bumping into fans: “You can’t go to the pharmacy without someone saying ‘Hey you’re the girl from Harry Potter!’ and I’m like ‘Yeah! Just buying tampons, see you in a bit!’”

5. On how her peers influenced her fight for gender equality: “When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of their beloved sports teams, because they didn’t want to appear muscle-y, when at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings, I decided that I was a feminist.”

6. On accepting her imperfections: “I don’t have perfect teeth. I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.”

7. On being subtly sexy: “My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.”

8. On why she’s refrained from plastic surgery: “I think the actresses who are really successful are the ones who are comfortable in their own skins and still look human.”

9. On why dressing yourself well is important: “I love fashion. I think it’s so important, because it’s how you show yourself to the world.”

10. On how she wouldn’t sacrifice her education for Hollywood: “I have felt for the last 10 years I have had this battle; I’ve been fighting so hard to have an education. It’s been this uphill struggle. I was Warner Bros’ pain in the butt. I was their scheduling conflict. I was the one who made life difficult.”

11. On making feminism more than just a one-gender issue: “Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too.”

12. On staying true to yourself: “The saddest thing a girl can do is dumb herself down for a guy.”

13. On breaking the confines of just being “an actress”: “I want to be a Renaissance woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I want to just do everything.”

14. On looking at her style evolution: “I used to look back at pictures and cringe but actually I’m quite proud that I’ve had fun with fashion and don’t always look perfect. The only regret I have is when I look at something I wore when I was very young and it obviously looks like it belonged to someone else.”

15. On finding true friendship: “I threw my 20th birthday party at Brown, and I didn’t even have to say to anyone not to put pictures on Facebook. Not a single picture went up. That was when I knew I’d found a solid group of friends, and I felt like I belonged.”

16. On being mindful: “It’s amazing people get so detached from what they eat and what they wear. No one has any contact with how things are made that are put in their body and put in their mouths and I just find it alarming that no one questions it.”

17. On having her fingers in several pies: “The difficulty for me is that I’m interested in so many different things. I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll end up doing four or five different things.”

18. On wanting equal pay: “I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men.”

19. On dealing with the pressure to look perfect: “As a younger woman, that pressure got me down, but I’ve made my peace with it. With airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can project an unobtainable image that’s dangerously unhealthy. I’m excited about the aging process. I’m more interested in women who aren’t perfect. They’re more compelling.”

20. On her superstar status: “I don’t consider myself to be a celebrity. I don’t fit that mould.”

21. On how we need to change our behaviour for equality: “If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.”

22. On challenging conventional gender stereotypes: “Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals.”

23. On why she’s not afraid to fail: “It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved. I can’t possibly live up to what everyone thinks I am and what everyone’s expectations of me are.’”

24. On staying true to her own personal tastes: “I want to avoid becoming too styled, too ‘done’ and too generic. You see people as they go through their career, and they just become more and more like everyone else. They start out with something individual about them, but it gets lost.”

25. On living her life without the pressure to please others: “All I can do is follow my instincts because I’ll never please everyone.”