Emma Stone
Emily Jean '"Emma" Stone' is an American actress and film producer. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Volpi Cup. In 2017, she was the world's highest-paid actress and named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
As a child in Arizona, Stone started acting in local theater productions before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the film industry. As a teenager, she made her television debut in the reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family. After small television roles, she appeared in a string of successful comedy films, such as Superbad, Zombieland, and Easy A, which became Stone's first leading role. Following this breakthrough, she starred in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love and the period drama The Help, and gained wider recognition as Gwen Stacy in Marc Webb's Spider-Man films.
Stone cemented her leading lady status by taking on more eclectic and dramatic roles. She earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying a recovering drug addict in the surrealist dark comedy Birdman and Abigail Hill in the absurdist period film The Favourite ; the latter marked her first of many collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos. She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for portraying an aspiring actress in the romantic musical La La Land and a resurrected suicide victim in Lanthimos's Poor Things ; she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for the latter. Stone also earned recognition for portraying tennis player Billie Jean King in Battle of the Sexes and the titular role in Cruella. She has since collaborated twice more with Lanthimos, starring in the anthology film Kinds of Kindness and the dark comedy Bugonia ; the latter earned her further nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Picture, making her the first woman to be nominated as both a producer and an actress in each of two different films.
On Broadway, Stone starred as Sally Bowles in a revival of the musical Cabaret. On television, she has led the dark comedy miniseries Maniac and The Curse. She and her husband, Dave McCary, founded the production company Fruit Tree in 2020.
Early life
Emily Jean Stone was born on November 6, 1988, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. to Jeffrey Charles Stone, the founder and CEO of a general-contracting company, and Krista Jean Stone, a homemaker. She lived on the grounds of the Camelback Inn resort from ages 12 to 15. She has a younger brother, Spencer. Her paternal grandfather, Conrad Ostberg Sten, was from a Swedish family that anglicized their surname to "Stone". She also has German, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. She was raised Lutheran.File:ValleyYouthTheatre.jpg|thumb|right|Valley Youth Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, where Stone appeared in sixteen productions
As an infant, Stone had baby colic and cried frequently. She consequently developed nodules and calluses on her vocal cords while she was a child. Stone has described herself as "loud" and "bossy" while growing up. She was educated at Sequoya Elementary School and attended Cocopah Middle School for sixth grade. Stone did not like school, though once said that her controlling nature meant that "I made sure I got all A's". She suffered panic attacks and anxiety as a child, and said they caused a decline in her social skills. Stone underwent therapy but said it was her participation in local theater plays that helped cure the attacks, recalling:
Stone wanted to act since age four; she wanted a career in sketch comedy initially, but shifted her focus to musical theater, and took vocal lessons for several years. Her acting debut, at age 11, came in a stage production of The Wind in the Willows, playing Otter. Stone was homeschooled for two years, during which time she appeared in 16 productions at Phoenix's Valley Youth Theatreincluding The Princess and the Pea, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoatand performed with the theater's improvisational comedy troupe. Around this time, she traveled to Los Angeles and auditioned unsuccessfully for a role on Nickelodeon's All That. Her parents later sent her for private acting lessons with a local acting coach, who had worked at the William Morris Agency in the 1970s.
Stone attended Xavier College Preparatoryan all-girl Catholic high schoolas a freshman, but dropped out after one semester to become an actress. She prepared a PowerPoint presentation for her parents titled "Project Hollywood" to convince them to let her move to California to pursue an acting career. In January 2004, she moved with her mother to an apartment in Los Angeles. She recalled, "I went up for every single show on the Disney Channel and auditioned to play the daughter on every single sitcom", adding, "I ended up getting none." Between auditions for roles, she enrolled in online high-school classes and worked part-time at a dog-treat bakery.
Career
Career beginnings (2004–2009)
When Stone registered for the Screen Actors Guild at age 16, the name "Emily Stone" was already taken, and she briefly went by "Riley Stone". She made her television debut as Laurie Partridge on the VH1 talent competition reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family. The resulting show, retitled The New Partridge Family, remained an unsold pilot. After guest-starring in the television shows Medium and Malcolm in the Middle, she decided to change her stage name to "Emma"—chosen in honor of Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls—as she struggled to adapt to the name Riley. She next appeared in Louis C.K.'s HBO series Lucky Louie, and unsuccessfully auditioned to star as Claire Bennet in the NBC science fiction drama Heroes ; later called this her "rock bottom" experience. In April 2007, she played Violet Trimble in the Fox action drama Drive, but the show was canceled after seven episodes.Stone made her feature film debut in Greg Mottola's comedy Superbad, co-starring Michael Cera and Jonah Hill. The film tells the story of two high school students who go through a series of comic misadventures after they plan to buy alcohol for a party. To play Hill's romantic interest, she dyed her hair red. Stone has described the experience of acting in her first film as "amazing ... very different than other experiences I've had since then". The film was a commercial success, and earned her the Young Hollywood Award for Exciting New Face.
The next year, Stone starred in the comedy The Rocker as Amelia Stone, the "straight face" bass guitarist in a band; she learned to play the bass for the role. The actress, who has called herself "a big smiler and laugher", said she found it difficult to play a character whose personality was so different from her own. The film and her performance received negative reviews from critics and was a commercial failure. Her next release, the romantic comedy The House Bunny, performed better at the box office, becoming a moderate commercial success. The film saw her play the president of a sorority, and perform a cover version of the Waitresses' 1982 song "I Know What Boys Like". Reviews were generally negative, but Stone was praised, with TV Guides Ken Fox writing that she "is well on her way to becoming a star".
Stone appeared in three films released in 2009. The first of these was opposite Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas in Mark Waters's Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Loosely based on Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, the romantic comedy has her playing a ghost who haunts her former boyfriend. Critical reaction to the film was negative, but it was a modest commercial success. Her most financially profitable venture that year was Ruben Fleischer's $102.3 million-grossing horror comedy film Zombieland, in which she featured alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin. In the film, she appeared as a con artist and survivor of a zombie apocalypse, in a role which Chris Hewitt of Empire magazine thought was "somewhat underwritten". In a more positive review, Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph called "the hugely promising Stone a tough cookie who projects the aura of being wiser than her years". Stone's third release in 2009 was Kieran and Michelle Mulroney's Paper Man, a comedy-drama which disappointed critics.
Rise to prominence (2010–2013)
Stone voiced an Australian Shepherd in Marmaduke, a comedy from director Tom Dey based on Brad Anderson's long-running comic strip of the same name. Her breakthrough came the same year with a starring role in Easy A, a teen comedy directed by Will Gluck. Partially based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, the film tells the story of Olive Penderghast, a high school student who becomes embroiled in a comic sex scandal after a false rumor circulates that she is sexually promiscuous. Stone read the script before the project was optioned for production, and pursued it with her manager while production details were being finalized. She found the script "so different and unique from anything I'd read before", calling it "funny and sweet". When Stone discovered that the film had begun production, she met with Gluck, expressing her enthusiasm for the project. A few months later, the audition process started and she met again with Gluck, becoming one of the first actresses to audition. The film received positive critical reviews, and Stone's performance was considered its prime asset. Anna Smith of Time Out wrote, "Stone gives a terrific performance, her knowing drawl implying intellect and indifference with underlying warmth." The film was a commercial success, grossing $75 million against its $8 million budget. Stone was nominated for a BAFTA Rising Star Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, and won the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance.In October 2010, Stone hosted an episode of NBC's sketch comedy Saturday Night Live; her appearances included a sketch playing off her resemblance to Lindsay Lohan. Stone called it "the greatest week of my life". She hosted again in 2011, appeared in an episode in 2014, and in its 40th anniversary special in 2015. A brief appearance in the sex comedy Friends with Benefits reunited her with Gluck. She followed this with a supporting role in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love alongside Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore. The film featured her as a law school graduate, and the love interest of Gosling's character. Despite finding "some inevitable collapses into convention" in the film, Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote that Stone "ties the whole film together". At the 2012 Teen Choice Awards, she won the Choice Movie Actress – Comedy award for her performance in the film. Crazy, Stupid, Love was a box office success, grossing $142.9 million worldwide against a production budget of $50 million.
Dismayed at being typecast as "the sarcastic interest of the guy", Stone co-starred with Viola Davis in Tate Taylor's period drama The Help, a film she found challenging. The film is based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name and is set in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. She met with Taylor to express a desire to work on the film. The director said, " was completely awkward and dorky, with her raspy voice, and she sat down and we got a little intoxicated and had a blast, and I just thought, 'God! God! This is Skeeter." She was cast as Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, an aspiring writer learning about the lives of the African-American maids. In preparation for the part, she learned to speak in a Southern accent and educated herself on the Civil Rights Movement through literature and film. With a worldwide gross of $216 million against a $25 million budget, The Help became Stone's highest-grossing film to that point. The film, and her performance, received positive reviews from critics. Writing for Empire, Anna Smith thought Stone was "well-meaning and hugely likable" despite finding flaws in the character. The film won Best Ensemble Cast from the Women Film Critics Circle and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
Stone turned down a role in the action comedy 21 Jump Street after signing on to Marc Webb's 2012 film The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series. She portrayed Gwen Stacy, the love interest of the titular superhero. Stone returned to her natural blonde hair color for the role, having dyed it red previously. She admitted to having never read the comics, and therefore felt responsible to educate herself about Spider-Man: "My experience was with the Sam Raimi movies ... I always assumed that Mary Jane was his first love", adding that she was only familiar with Stacy's character as portrayed by Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-Man 3. The Amazing Spider-Man was a commercial success and was the seventh highest-grossing film of the year with global revenues of $757.9 million. Entertainment Weeklys Lisa Schwarzbaum found Stone to be "irresistible", and Ian Freer of Empire was particularly impressed with Stone's and Garfield's performances. At the annual People's Choice Awards ceremony, she was nominated for three awards, including Favorite Movie Actress. Later that year, Stone voiced a role in the crime-based video game Sleeping Dogs, which earned her a Spike Video Game Award.
Stone began 2013 with a voice role in the DreamWorks Animation film The Croods, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This followed with an appearance in Movie 43, an anthology film which consists of 16 short stories—she played the title role in the segment entitled "Veronica". She next starred alongside Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn in Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad, a crime thriller set in Los Angeles during the 1940s. A. O. Scott of The New York Times dismissed the film as "a hectic jumble of fedoras and zoot suits", but praised Stone's pairing with Gosling.