Emma Watson was left searching in vain for a lift home on the Hogwarts Express after her car was impounded by police.
The Harry Potter star, 33, saw her £30,000 Audi A3 towed away after she left it ‘illegally’ parked in Stratford-Upon-Avon on Monday night.
It appeared the actress, who is currently studying for a part-time MA in creative writing at Oxford, had failed to clock a no parking sign and accidentally left it blocking one of the entrances to a small car parking bay.
Watson was photographed talking with officers in an attempt to free her car as it was loaded onto the back of a tow truck, in pictures obtained by MailOnline.
The Beauty and the Beast actress, who has stayed out of the spotlight more in recent years, was reportedly enjoying a night out in the nearby Rose and Crown pub before she came ‘flying out’ according to eyewitnesses as the drama unfolded.
The publication reported that Watson seemed to fail to realise she had trapped any fellow drivers in with her vehicle.
A local pizza restaurant manager – coming off a 12-hour shift – is said to have spent over three hours trying to locate the car’s driver before giving up and calling police to come and sort the matter.
Watson was seen dressed in a black overcoat and matching French beret, standing next to a male companion, as she spoke with an officer in an attempt to free her car.
However, the on-call tow-truck driver, dressed in high-visibility overalls, successfully confiscated her dark blue Audi.
She will now have to pay a fine of £192 to retrieve her car, as well as a further charge for ‘retention’ of every 24-hour period it remains in police custody. This is equal to £26 per day.
The frustrated restaurant boss, who asked not to be identified, told MailOnline that their vehicle had been trapped for nearly four hours due to the actress’s car blocking the exit.
‘Three and a half hours of searching for the driver was the last thing I needed after working a 12-hour shift,’ they added.
‘The car had parked in front of our gate which is a no-parking zone. I went into every single restaurant in the area asking if anyone owned the car.’
Having claimed that no would admit it was their car, the disgruntled employee said they were ‘forced to call the police so they would move the car and I could get out’.
‘But when the police started to tow her car away, she came flying out of the pub shouting, “That’s my car, that’s my car!”,’ they relayed to the publication.
Another onlooker said it was around 11pm that the actress rushed out to the street to try and save her car.
‘A man had come into the pub earlier to say that a blue Audi A3 had blocked the entrance to a car park.’
‘The police came first and then they called a recovery vehicle and towed it away,’ they added.
Warwickshire Police confirmed to Metro.co.uk that a blue Audi was ‘impounded and taken away’ following a report that it was ‘parked across a driveway and blocking in two cars’ on Stratford-Upon-Avon’s High Street near the junction with Sheep Street.
Watson first rose to fame as an 11-year-old with the release of the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001, in which she starred as Hermione Granger alongside Daniel Radcliffe as Harry and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley.
In recent years, following her most recent film appearance in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version of Little Women, Watson has directed an advert for Prada, started a feminist book club and continued with her activism.
Metro.co.uk has contacted a rep for Emma Watson for comment.
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