Emma Watson breaks silence after her car was towed in Stratford-upon-Avon

Emma Watson has joked about her car being towed away in Stratford-upon-Avon earlier this week.

The 33-year-old Harry Potter star’s £30,000 Audi S3 was reportedly towed and impounded by police on Tuesday (6 February) evening after being “illegally” parked for hours in the West Midlands town.

“Still searching for parking in Stratford upon Avon,” Watson shared on Twitter/X on Thursday alongside a crying laughing face emoji. “Merchant of Venice [very] good if you can still get tickets.”

Tagging the Royal Shakespeare Company, the tweet appears to confirm that Watson was watching The Merchant of Venice 1936 at the Swan Theatre while her car allegedly “trapped” other vehicles in a car park for nearly four hours.

“The car had parked in front of our gate which is a no-parking zone,” the owner of Red Hot Mammas pizzeria told the Daily Mail.

Three and a half hours of searching for the driver was the last thing I needed after working a 12-hour shift.”

In photographs published by the tabloid, the Harry Potter star was seen speaking to an officer and a tow truck driver as she attempted to free her car on Tuesday evening (6 February).

According to reports and eyewitnesses who spoke with The Sun, Watson was handed some paperwork before her car was eventually hauled away.

Emma was pretty upset that her car was being towed away, she came running over shouting, ‘Hey, that’s my car’, and was arguing with the truck driver, but he was having none of it,” one person recounted. “Emma was with her mum who watched the whole thing in the street.”

The report was made at 9.42pm and the car was impounded and taken away at 10.21pm,” they added. “No crime was recorded.”

Watson’s representatives did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

The incident comes just months after Watson was seen driving her car with duct tape covering the front area just below the passenger-side headlight.

In recent years, the Perks of Being a Wallflower actor has taken a step back from acting, explaining that it’s allowed her to have more “autonomy”.

I’m so glad that I allowed things to be messy for a minute and to really allow myself to not know [what’s next], because the knowing that I’ve come to, I wouldn’t trade that for anything,” she told Vogue in December.

Watson revealed in May that she was returning to Oxford University – where she attended as part of the Visiting Student Programme from 2011 to 2012. She enrolled in an MA Creative Writing course, which started in September 2023.