The Bling Ring: Emma Watson as you've never seen her before

The Bling Ring: Emma Watson as you've never seen her before

Harry Potter star Emma Watson is back on the big screen in an amazing true story of a bling-hungry gang preying on Hollywood stars, the Sunday People reports.

The respectable, middle-class kids became burglars who used the web to see when victims such as Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom were out on the town.

Then they broke in and helped themselves to armfuls of luxury goodies â€" before partying.

Called the Bling Ring in Los Angeles, the fame-obsessed gang carried out a series of brazen thefts.

Paris Hilton’s home was raided and she did not even notice. So they went back again and again.

Emma, 22, stars as Nicki in The Bling Ring â€" due out in June.

Director Sofia Coppola said: “It’s really fun to see Emma so different. I was always surprised on set when she transformed into this other character. So think it w ill be really fun for audiences to see her.”

The Bling Ring targeted a Hollywood name, like Megan Fox, then used Twitter and Facebook to track whether they were out.

Google Maps helped show addresses and security levels.

The raids, in 2008 and 2009, netted millions in designer clothes, jewellery and art and became the talk of Hollywood.

Leading member Nick Prugo was the son of a studio executive.

He said: “There was a definite thrill to it. Looking back I don’t think any of us realised how severe it was until we actually got caught.

“It didn’t seem as bad as it was. Now I realise how serious it was and it scares me to death.”

One of Prugo’s five accomplices was Alexis Neiers, who Emma’s character Nicki is based on.

She was with them when they broke into Orlando Bloom’s house and took a Rolex watch collection worth £300,000.

Neiers protested her innocence and claimed she was so drunk she had no idea what happened.

But she did not contest the charges in court and was locked up for 30 days. At one point she was in a cell next to Lohan.

When Neiers got mixed up with the Bling Ring she was trying to make it as a reality TV star in a Made in Chelsea-style programme about a Hollywood party girl.

Producers turned the show, called Pretty Wild, into a story about her bid to stay out of jail.

Neiers talked about gang member Rachel Lee and said: “Rachel’s a klepto freak. Rachel was in charge. She started it all.”

Lee was a privileged teenager and drove a white Audi to school. She won a creative arts scholarship and a 2007 best-dressed award.

Before launching her celebrity crime spree with Prugo she was caught shoplifting cosmetics.

The pair met at Indian Hills school in Calabasas, an affluent part of Los Angeles, and became close friends, bondi ng over their love of fashion labels including Chanel and Prada.

The obsession led them to crime.

Prugo said: “It didn’t just come together overnight. This was built up over a year and a half.

“It escalated into homes and then celebrities’ houses and it became very big, very fast.”

It began when Lee suggested they burgled the home of a boy she knew was out of town.

They found £6,000 in cash under a bed and went on a shopping spree in Beverly Hills.

'The Bling Ring' with Emma Watson

 

Soon they were checking the doors of expensive cars and seeing if doors were unlocked â€" almost every night.

The group took credit cards and went on shopping sprees in upmarket stores.

At the end of 2008 they chose Paris Hilton’s £3million home.

Prugo said it was “because she was dumb” and might leave her door open and jewellery lying around.

They located it through Google and when they got there they were proved right.

Hilton had gone out, left the key under the mat and her safe unlocked.

Prugo’s lawyer Markus Dombois said: “They found cocaine lying out on the bed and jewellery all around the place. It was like stepping into a store on Rodeo Drive when the owners were out.”

When Hilton returned home she didn’t even notice she was a crime victim.

Prugo and Lee returned to burgle the place FIVE times.

Lee, obsessed by reality TV, carried Hilton’s door key like a trophy on her own key chain.

As each break-in began she would call out: “Let’s go shopping.”

She bragged to friends and the Bling Ring gained recruits, swelling to six at one stage.

But it could not last. They burgled The Hills star Audrina Partridge while she was out on the red carpet on Oscar night in February 2009, taking £30,000 of jewellery, clothes and electronics.

But they were caught on CCTV and Partridge put the footage online.

She said: “I watched the security video expecting to see these big scary guys but instead it was these kids.”

Hilton finally noticed after one of the gang took £600,000 of her jewellery stuffed into a Louis Vuitton bag.

They were also caught on camera piling loot into bags at the home of Lindsay Lohan, who was Lee’s idol.

But detectives did not really need the footage.

The gang had bragged so much that officers had received many tip-offs.

All they had to do was use Facebook to see who was whose friend an d join the dots.

Lee, now 23, was jailed for four years. Prugo, a year younger, was given two years last May.