Emily Jean "Emma" Stone (born November 6, 1988) is an American actress. She made her feature film debut in Superbad (2007). She has co-starred in The House Bunny (2008), Zombieland (2009), and Kieran and Michelle Mulroney's Paper Man (2009). In 2010, Stone made her leading debut in Easy A, for which she received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress â€" Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Afterwards, Stone co-starred in notable films including Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), Tate Taylor's The Help (2011) as Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, The Amazing Spider-Man film series (2012, 2014) as Gwen Stacy, and the animated film The Croods (2013), where she voiced Eep.
In 2014, Stone reprised her role as Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and co-starred in Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman. Her performance in Birdman earned her nominations for the SAG, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. On November 11, 2014, she made her Broadway debut as a replacement in the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret, in which she will lead until February 2015.
Early life
Stone was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, to Krista (née Yeager), a homemaker, and Jeff Stone, founder and CEO of a general-contracting company. Her parents are co-owners of the Camelback Golf Club, and Stone lived on the grounds of the Camelback Inn resort from the age of twelve. She has a brother, Spencer, who is two years younger. Stone's paternal grandfather, Conrad Ostberg Stone, was of Swedish descent, and his family's original surname "Sten" was anglicized to "Stone" when immigrating to the U.S. through Ellis Island. Her other ancestry is Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, Scottish, and Irish.
Stone attended Sequoya Elementary School and then Cocopah Middle School for the sixth grade. She was homeschooled for two years, during which time she appeared in sixteen productions at Valley Youth Theatre, including The Princess and the Pea, Alice in Wonderland, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and performed with the theater's improv comedy troupe. Her parents also sent her for private lessons with a local acting coach who had worked at the William Morris Agency in the 1970s and still had Hollywood connections.
Stone attended Xavier College Preparatory, an all-girl Catholic high school, as a freshman for one semester. Despite this, she was raised as a Lutheran. She gave a PowerPoint presentation to her parents, set to the Madonna song "Hollywood", to convince them to let her move to California for an acting career. In January 2004, at the age of fifteen, she moved with her mother to an apartment in Los Angeles and began homeschooling again.
Stone is naturally blonde. She won her first role as a teenager after dyeing her hair dark brown. Then Judd Apatow, the producer of Superbad, had Stone dye her hair from dark brown to red for her role in the film. She returned to blonde for her role in The Amazing Spider-Man.
Acting career
2004â€"08: Early career
There was already a listing for an "Emily Stone" when Stone registered for the Screen Actors Guild, so she chose "Emma" as her stage name. Her family and friends call her Emily. She first chose "Riley Stone" as her stage name, but after guest-starring on Malcolm in the Middle, she decided that she was more comfortable with "Emma", a nickname that her mother had given her.
Stone's low-pitched husky voice is a result of having baby colic, a condition of chronic crying as an infant, resulting in the development of nodules. She has calluses on her vocal cords as an adult.
Stone made her television debut as Laurie Partridge on the VH1 talent competition reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family (2004). The resulting show, retitled The New Partridge Family (2005), only produced an unsold pilot. Afterwards, Stone guest-starred in a number of television series including Medium, Malcolm in the Middle and Lucky Louie. She auditioned to star in the NBC science fiction drama Heroes as Claire Bennet, and overheard in the casting room "On a scale of 1 to 10, you are an 11" â€" but the casting directors were referring to Hayden Panettiere, who was cast instead. Stone called this experience "rock bottom". In April 2007, she went on to star in the Fox action drama Drive created by Tim Minear and Ben Queen, as Violet Trimble, but the show was canceled after seven episodes.
Stone made her feature film debut in the comedy Superbad (2007) with Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, directed by Greg Mottola as Jules, the love interest of Seth (Hill). The following year, she co-starred with Rainn Wilson and Teddy Geiger in the comedy The Rocker (2008), directed by Peter Catteneo, where she played Amelia Stone, the bass guitarist in a band featuring Geiger. She learned to play bass for the role. Later that year, Stone co-starred with Anna Faris, Colin Hanks and Kat Dennings in the romantic comedy The House Bunny, directed by Fred Wolf where she played Natalie, the president of a sorority and sang on a single from the film, "I Know What Boys Like", a cover version of the 1982 song by The Waitresses.
2009â€"11: Breakthrough
Stone co-starred with Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas in the romantic comedy Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), a takeoff of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, directed by Mark Waters, where she played Allison Vandermeersh, "The Ghost of Girlfriends Past", who haunts Conor Mead (McConaughey), a womanizing photographer who does not believe in true love. She co-starred with Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin in the horror comedy Zombieland directed by Ruben Fleischer, where she played Wichita, a survivor and con artist from Wichita, Kansas, traveling across the U.S. with her younger sister Little Rock (Breslin). Eventually, she reveals that her real name is "Krista", which is coincidentally the name of Stone's real life mother. The project began shooting in Atlanta in February 2009 and was released on October 2, 2009.
Later that year, Stone co-starred with Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds and Lisa Kudrow in Kieran and Michelle Mulroney's comedy-drama Paper Man (2009), as Abby, a babysitter that Richard Dunn (Daniels) hires after moving to Long Island. Stone began filming her scenes on November 11, 2008, in Montauk, New York, using well-known local locations. The film was released on June 15, 2009
Stone co-starred with Owen Wilson in the comedy Marmaduke (2010) directed by Tom Dey, a live-action adaptation of Brad Anderson's long-running comic strip of the same name, where she voiced Mazie, a tomboyish Australian Shepherd and a friend of Marmaduke (voiced by Wilson). The same year, Stone made her leading debut in the comedy Easy A directed by Will Gluck, as Olive Penderghast, a high school student who scandalizes her teachers and in particular, her more conservatively religious classmates after a false rumor circulates that she is sexually promiscuous. The script was written by Bert V. Royal and contrasts Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical romance novel The Scarlet Letter and its heroine, Hester Prynne, to the life of Prynne in the film versions. Stone read the script before the project was optioned for production, and kept an eye on it along with her manager until preparations were made. About what attracted her to the script, she said, "It’s so different and unique from anything I’d read before." And that it was "funny and sweet". When Stone discovered that the film had gone into production, she met with Gluck to express her enthusiasm about the project. A few months later, the audition process started and Stone met with Gluck again to be one of the first actresses to audition. The film was shot in Ojai, California, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2010 and was released on September 17, 2010. Stone was nominated for the 2011 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her role.
Stone appeared at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010, and introduced Linkin Park, she stated in 2008 that she would eventually like to venture into film production, producing her own films and that her dream was to appear on the NBC late-night sketch comedy Saturday Night Live. Stone hosted the show on October 23, 2010, and again on November 12, 2011.
Stone collaborated with Will Gluck again and cameoed in Gluck's sex comedy Friends with Benefits as Kayla, who breaks up with Dylan Harper (Justin Timberlake). The film began filming in July 2010, in Los Angeles and New York City, and was released on July 22, 2011. Later that year, Stone co-starred with Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling in the Warner Bros. romantic comedy-drama Crazy, Stupid, Love, directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa as Hannah Weaver, a law school graduate. The film began shooting on April 16, 2010 in Los Angeles and was released on July 29, 2011. Stone starred in Tate Taylor's drama The Help from Touchstone Pictures and DreamWorks Studios, based on Kathryn Stockett's novel of the same name and set in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s, where she played Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, an aspiring writer learning about the lives of the African-American maids. She used a Southern dialect for the role.
2012â€"present: Further success
Stone co-starred with Andrew Garfield in the Columbia Pictures and Marvel Entertainment superhero film The Amazing Spider-Man directed by Marc Webb, and is a reboot of the Spider-Man film series, where she played Gwen Stacy, the seventeen-year-old classmate and the love interest of Peter Parker (Garfield). The film went into production in New York City and Los Angeles in December 2010 and commenced in April 2011. Stone was considered to co-star in the action comedy 21 Jump Street, a reboot of the Fox police drama, with her Superbad co-star Jonah Hill, but she turned the role down, after signing on to The Amazing Spider-Man, which was released on July 3, 2012.
Stone co-starred in the DreamWorks 3-D computer animated caveman comedy The Croods, directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders as Eep, the oldest daughter of Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage) and Ugga (voiced by Catherine Keener), with Eep's love interest, Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds). The film was released on March 22, 2013. She co-starred as the title role in the comedic short film Veronica, with Kieran Culkin and directed by Griffin Dunne. and is one of sixteen segments of the Relativity anthology film, Movie 43. The feature film was produced by the Farrelly brothers.
Stone co-starred with Ryan Gosling again and Sean Penn in the Warner Bros. crime thriller Gangster Squad, directed by Ruben Fleischer and based on a true story set in the 1940s where she played Grace Faraday, who enters a love triangle with LAPD Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Gosling) and mob boss Mickey Cohen (Penn). The film was released on January 11, 2013 in North America.
In 2010, Stone signed on for her third collaboration with writer and director Will Gluck, starring in and executive producing a comedy for Screen Gems. The film studio has given Stone and Gluck full discretion in developing a new project, after the success of Easy A, their first film collaboration. In 2012, Stone signed on to star in and executive produce Michael Diliberti's comedy Little White Corvette for GK Films.
In mid-2012, Stone voiced a supporting role in the crime-based video game, Sleeping Dogs. In 2013, Stone reprised her role of Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which was released on May 2, 2014. Stone's performance was well-received by critics. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post mentioned that "Stone [...] once again delivers a winning and mostly believable performance as the smart, self-possessed Gwen." In 2012, she signed on to co-star in Cameron Crowe's untitled romantic comedy, that was initially titled Deep Tiki, with Bradley Cooper for Sony Pictures that filmed in Hawaii from September to December 2013 and is scheduled to be released on May 29, 2015.
In 2013, Stone signed on to co-star in Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's black comedy Birdman with Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, as Sam Thomson, the recovering-addict daughter of actor Riggan Thomson (Keaton), who becomes his assistant. The film began principal photography in New York City in mid-April 2013 and was released on October 17, 2014 and received critical acclaim, especially Stone, Keaton and Norton's performances. Stone received numerous accolades for her role, including nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress. In June 2013, she dropped out of Guillermo Del Toro's horror film Crimson Peak and was replaced by Mia Wasikowska. In May 2013, it was announced that Stone had signed on to co-star in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Magic in the Moonlight with Colin Firth, set in the 1920s, shot on the French Riviera, as Sophie Baker, a psychic whom Stanley Crawford (Firth), a magician is asked to expose as a fraud. The film was released on July 25, 2014 by Sony Pictures Classics.
In May 2014, it was announced that Stone had signed on to collaborate with Woody Allen again and co-star in Allen's mystery comedy-drama with Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey and Jamie Blackley that filmed from July to August 2014 in Newport, Rhode Island. In August of the same year, it was announced by the Roundabout Theater Company that Stone had signed on to make her Broadway debut with Alan Cumming in the revival of the musical Cabaret as Sally Bowles, taking over the role from Michelle Williams.
Modeling
Since February 2012, Stone has been one of the faces for Revlon cosmetics, in both print and television ads.
Personal life
Stone moved from Los Angeles to Greenwich Village, New York City in 2009.
Stone's mother Krista was diagnosed with breast cancer and won her battle in 2008. To celebrate her mother being two years cancer free in 2010, Stone wrote a letter to Paul McCartney asking him to draw two birds' feet because "Blackbird" is her mother's favorite song. He did so, and Stone and her mother received matching wrist tattoos. Since then, Stone has done extensive work with Revlon and Stand Up to Cancer to help fight women's cancer.
In mid-2011, Stone began dating her The Amazing Spider-Man co-star Andrew Garfield.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Theatre
Awards and nominations
References
External links
- Emma Stone at the Internet Movie Database
