Emma Stone Connection
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Emma Stone has had a slew of red carpet appearances and interviews lately to promote “The Amazing Spider-Man,” but it’s been nothing but a breeze for the charismatic actress.
It seems no one is immune to her understated beauty and self-deprecating charm. In fact, her New York Magazine profile was so glistening that some article commenters lambasted its “girl crush” tone. Her fashion sense has been the center of envious attention, and her off-screen relationship with her “Spider-Man” co-star Andrew Garfield (which she’s reticent to publicly discuss) seems to be going swimmingly.
Clearly, Stone is doing something right. Taking a page out of Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” she’s smiling, listening and appreciating her rise to the (“Easy”) A-list, making us fall deeper in love with her one step at a time.
From her PowerPoint-fueled Hollywood start to her humble rise to success, here are six ways that Emma Stone has won us over:
Ambitious adolescence
At 14, Stone enrolled as a freshman at Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, Ariz., but she wanted to go to Los Angeles to be in the movies. So, as she recounted to Blackbook Magazine, in her freshman year she made a PowerPoint entitled “Project Hollywood 2004,” set it to Madonna’s “Hollywood” and used it to convince her parents to let her drop out of school and move to L.A. to audition for film and TV. Her mother stayed with her, homeschooling the Scottsdale, Ariz., native through high school.
Discerning choice of roles
Although “The Amazing Spider-Man” will likely be the role that reaches the biggest audience, her success has been climbing ever since she starred as the heart-meltingly hot high-school dream girl Jules in “Superbad.” She honed her comedic chops alongside co-star Jonah Hill before showing that con artists can be silly and sexy in “Zombieland,” and then, drum roll please, “Easy A” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love” helped perfect her smart, sexy, wry sense of humor which she followed with a serious turn in “The Help,” establishing a hilarious, serious, various persona for the Emma Stone we now know and love.
Self-deprecating humor
The way Stone combines her sarcastic humor with real vulnerability has proven to be her siren song. Her turn as Olive Penderghast, a high-school student who video diaries her misunderstood “Scarlet Letter”-inspired life in “Easy A,” allowed Stone to showcase a witty, cultured, willing-to-be-humbled character who’s nothing but unforgettable. We hope she won’t use her siren song to crash us into a cliff, though, because when she turns on the comedic charm, it’s impossible to look away.
Approachability
Between press tours, filming, photo shoots, interviews and maintaining some semblance of a personal life, the natural blonde seems nothing like the average 23-year-old. But compared to the likes of Angelina Jolie or Sean Penn — who are off doing good in Cambodia and Haiti, respectively — her stateside sensibility lends itself to greater approachability and relatability. We’re sure she’ll take up a cause or two when she’s older and more firmly entrenched in the Hollywood elite, but for now, Stone’s youthful, live-in-the-Hollywood moment sensibility is a surprisingly appreciated repose from the busy, hyperaffluent, seemingly out-of-touch movie star we’re used to.
Understated (yet unbelievable) looks
Sony Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper noted that with red hair, Stone looks less like “someone who will steal your boyfriend,” according to New York Magazine. But whether she’s a redhead, blonde or brunette, the actress, who’s now the new face of Revlon, could steal a boyfriend or two sporting any hair color. “The pretty thing … it was never a value to me growing up,” she told the magazine, adding that she signed with Revlon so young girls would know they don’t have to look like models to be beautiful. To judge for yourself whether she doesn’t have the looks of a model, here are a few of her “Spider-Man” red carpet looks. (For the record, yes, she’s model material.)
She’s not the center of the world (but she is)
Perhaps the most refreshing — although most difficult to believe — quality of Stone is that she isn’t too interested in herself or in sharing her stories. “I freak out having a Facebook” she told New York Magazine, noting that she only wants her closest friends to know the most personal details of her life, specifically concerning Garfield. Yet, considering the fact that her face seems to dominate the newstand (now on the July Vogue cover), if she wanted to tell story after self-centered story, we’re sure millions would be glad to perk up and listen.
The trademark of this girl is her deep sultry voice. Known as red-head in the film fraternity, she started her career with film Superbad. Andrew Garfield’s real life heart stopper Emma Stone will be starring opposite him in the Sony Picture’s film “THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN”!
Stone was initially dubious about accepting the role of Gwen. She agrees she has read the Marvel comics series of the spider-man and finds it an amazing read yet it seemed to be a challenge initially considering the massive success of the previous films. However, the doubts receded as soon as she gave her auditions. And with the doubts, receded her fears and pressures of working in the film. She says, “I know that the audience might not be satisfied but if I was the choice of the director then he must have put in some thought before he chose me to play the character of Gwen!”
The sparks of the real life love will sure be visible onscreen as well. Talking about the emotional synchronization with the character of Peter Parker, Emma says, “Some things are supposed to be felt, I cannot spell how the emotional harmony is between Gwen and Peter! Gwen loves Peter Parker not because he is ‘The Spider-man’. Gwen comes from a family background where she fears that her father might die any minute. She gets a much deserved emotional support and warmth from Peter.”
So will we see Emma butt kicking goons in the film? She says, “There wasn’t a major amount of stunt work for me. I’ve always thought that if Gwen needed to kick some ass, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to me because she’s pretty focused on her studies. She’s an editor and she’s focused on academia, we don’t ever really see her getting in shape. That would have been an interesting character element, but there’s even a part where I had to hit someone with something and I made sure she looked like she did not know what she was doing, that she’d never hit anyone before. My version of Gwen, like me, wouldn’t know how to go about really kicking someone’s ass. She’s a policeman’s daughter who’s been told to be responsible and to avoid that side of the world.”
Films like Spider-man are memorable not just for the audience but become engrained on the brains cells of the actors as well. The memorable moment of playing Gwen for Stone had been the one where she is swinging in the air and there is music going on in the background. “I feared that I might fall off but the music was such a delight to ears that I survived the scene!” she says.
Does she feel jittery now that the film is about to release? Emma says, “The entire film is like a mission and we, actors, are a small part of it, however, we also play the role of taking this mission forward. And I hope when the audience comes to see the film they like it and leave the theatre smiling!”
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN of Sony Pictures releases in 3D all over India on 29th June, a week ahead of USA.
Emma Stone hopped on the Saturday Night Live stage last night to kick off the show, hosting the late night laugher for the second time in an episode that included a couple of raunchy sketches.
But her rather tame opening monologue with a Spiderman-costumed Andy Samberg (and her real Amazing Spider-Man co-star Andrew Garfield) was not the least bit indicative of what was to come.
Now, on to the hotter news. In “Technology Hump,” Stone and Samberg played hosts of a show for techies who have an odd fetish of watching gadgets like digital cameras and Android phones, um, hump (seriously).
Then, in “Bridal Shower Gifts,” while Kristin Wiig played a bubbly bachelorette, Stone transformed into Wiig’s frumpy, husky-voiced co-worker who brought quite a few inappropriate “gifts” to the occasion.
And those weren’t her only notable performances.
Stone also played a contestant on the “Secret Word” game show in which she faced off against Wiig’s overdramatic Mindy Elise Grayson character, as a Miss America winner who makes out with her own ventriloquist dummy during the game.
When Emma Stone made her film debut in 2007’s Superbad, she felt like an unusual breath of fresh air — a brand-new teen actress who could already boast a fully formed personality. If it took her a few years to find her groove, well, she’s certainly found it now. Stone, who landed one high-profile comedy every year since Superbad — 2008’s The House Bunny, 2009’s Zombieland, and then irrevocably broke out with 2010’s Easy A, has been everywhere this summer, charming all the while. She’s brought her particular brand of husky-voiced good humor to three roles, a cameo in Friends with Benefits, a romance with Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love, and today’s conscientious drama The Help. At only 22, Stone already seems like a full-blown movie star: Can The Help do anything but help her cause? To get a sense of her esteem in Hollywood, we polled industry insiders and asked them one simple question: If Emma Stone were a stock, would you buy, sell, or hold?
Stock History: Let one impressed studio chief we spoke to detail Stone’s back story: “She told her mom when she was 15 years old that she was moving to L.A. to become an actress. Her parents believed in her so much that the mom moved her life out here, too, believing it was a matter of time.” The Stones ended up moving into short-term furnished rentals already filled with other families dipping a toe into the child-actor waters. “Most of those people come out because their kid is cute and has a few commercials,” noted the studio chief. “This was different: Her mom knew she was coming out and wasn’t buying a round-trip ticket, because she wasn’t coming back.”
Stone had some early near-misses with reality and TV stardom, that, in retrospect, kept her movie career on track. At age 15, she entered the unlikely VH1 reality competition In Search of the New Partridge Family and won the role of Laurie Partridge for a potential series remake that thankfully never advanced beyond the pilot stage. Two years later, she auditioned to play the cheerleader on Heroes, and found out that Hayden Panettiere got the part just before she went in to read, a moment she later called “rock bottom.”
But those years of relative obscurity worked in her favor, forcing her to try to make it in film, which she has obviously done. Since Superbad Stone has worked steadily, and crucially, in rowdy movies with boy appeal, not standard-issue romantic comedies. She’ll try to work the same magic in 2012, when she plays Gwen Stacy to Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker in the down-to-earth reboot The Amazing Spider-Man.
Peers: She’s at the head of a pack that includes established stars like Scarlett Johansson (26), Rachel McAdams (32), and Keira Knightley (26), as well as comers like Blake Lively (23), Olivia Wilde (27), and now Rooney Mara (25).
Market Value: Pretty decent. She’s had the luck of appearing in several successful comedies, and though Crazy, Stupid, Love wasn’t quite the box office sleeper the studio was hoping for, its ensemble nature will protect Stone from any dents. More importantly, she managed to open Easy A all by her lonesome, and its eventual $58 million gross left other female-targeted films in the dust, including Love and Other Drugs, Morning Glory, and the Katherine Heigl vehicles Life as We Know It and Killers. The Help will be the first movie since Easy A she’s had to open alone, but even if it doesn’t do that well, she’s got a safety net: a spider’s one.
What Hollywood Thinks: “She’s unbelievably versatile,” raved the studio chief. “She has dramatic chops and comedic chops. But more, she’s got enough tomboy in her that she seems like someone who’d have a good relationship with her brothers. And she’s ‘relatable’ - which means she doesn’t look like she wants to fuck your boyfriend.”
Added this studio mogul, “I think it says everything about her that she’s blonde naturally, but dyes her hair red: In a town where everyone wants to be blonde and be a girl named ‘Muffin,’ she doesn’t want to be ordinary.”
“She’s right at the top of her age group: She has the Spider-Man franchise now, and she seems to work in both comedy and drama,” said one agent we spoke to. “And she has, as they say, that ‘approachable’ beauty - sort of like Jen Aniston had in the early nineties — and is not intimidating, like, say, Megan Fox.”
Stone’s relative youth means that “she hasn’t had any of the inevitable ups and downs” and even though one may be coming in the oddly-timed release of The Help, she’s not likely to be hurt by it.
“Why the hell are they releasing The Help in August?” asks our agent, adding, “It’s very peculiar. But even if it gets lost, it probably won’t hurt her, because she has so many other slam-dunks in the can. She has to be one of the hottest actors in the business right now.”
Of course, that’s not to say things can’t go off the rails — after all, look what happened to Kirsten Dunst: “For young women it’s very, very competitive, more so than for men,” explains the agent, “There are so few rugged leading men, but the women, there’s a lot of them, and so the town is very unforgiving to women, while someone like Tom Hardy will get shot after shot after shot.” SMH there.
The Analysis: No matter how it does, a serious-issues drama like The Help is going to be an asset for Stone, coming along at just the right time to break her comic typecasting. Her next two projects will help expand the town’s perception of her: She just signed on to play the femme fatale caught between Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling in the period picture Gangster Squad, and even her love interest role in Spider-Man gives her room to stretch: When she was first cast in the then-secretive project, everyone assumed she’d be playing the confident, redheaded Mary Jane, in what seemed like a perfect pick. Instead, she’s playing gentle, blond Gwen Stacy, subtly tweaking our expectations of her.
“I think she’s doing everything right at the moment,” raved one top manager. “The Help has a weird release, but I hear it’s good, so hopefully it’ll stay with us into the fall. And there’s Gangster Squad, which is an interesting project. She has breadth. Maybe the next step is to engineer her own success and develop something for herself, attach herself as a producer, because any studio would make a movie with her now.”
The studio chief disagreed somewhat: “I don’t think she needs to develop her own stuff; I think that’s a different talent and one I’m not sure that she has. But she can make it just be being selective. She makes the smart choices and goes after them like nobody else; I mean, she went after Easy A like no one has ever gone after a role before.”
He added, “She has the ‘c’ word. With Sharon Stone, it means something else, but with Emma Stone, it means ‘charisma.’ There’s something so charismatic about her.”
The Bottom Line: And it’d be a shame to waste that charisma in supporting parts. Stone is smart to pick great ensembles to work with, and we’re looking forward to Spider-Man and Gangster Squad, but let’s hope she can find some 2013 projects where she gets to be the star, and not just the love interest.
Buy/Sell/Hold: Strongest Possible BUY.
I have added 6 photos of Emma Stone from her shoot with “Teen Vogue” into our photo gallery. Also added the article featured in the magazine into our press archive!
GALLERY LINKS:
Emma Stone Photo Gallery > Miscellaneous > Photo Sessions > #42
Hundreds of curious onlookers and paying fans gathered to see “The Help” on Saturday, the story of a budding white journalist (Emma Stone) fresh out of Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) in the early 1960s who convinces black maids Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) to risk their jobs and lives to give her a first-person account of domestic service.
Karen Evers was one of the fans who gladly handed over $100 for a ticket to Saturday’s benefit showing of “The Help” at the Malco Grandview theater in Madison, Miss.
The No. 1 New York Times best-seller by the same name was, in some ways, the University of Mississippi graduate’s story, too.
“We had help,” Evers, 49, said of growing up with a family maid in northeast Jackson. “We called her Jenny. She died of a stroke.”
“And it wasn’t until my adult years that I realized that not only was I grieving for my father, who had died, but for my help.”
More than $150,000 raised from ticket sales — the highest at $500 — benefits Baptist Town Community Development, said Bill Crump, a Baptist Town board member .
Baptist Town Community Development revitalizes the 100-year-old African-American neighborhood in Greenwood, Miss., known as Baptist Town. It was the setting for some scenes from “The Help.”
Kasie Wood, 28, of Columbus, Miss., brought friend Sarah Lambert, 29, of Jackson, Miss., to stand with her, camera in hand, just feet from the red carpet.
“We’re excited about Emma,” Lambert said of Stone, who plays heroine Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan. She enjoyed watching Stone as the female lead in “Easy A.”
“Many times,” Lambert said. “And ‘The House Bunny,’ and I’ve seen ‘Superbad.’”
She’s read the book by Jackson native Kathryn Stockett, a story praised for its candid portrayal of race relations during the civil rights era, but panned by some as resurrecting painful memories.
Many brought copies of the book in hopes of snagging autographs from the cast of the movie filmed both in Jackson and Greenwood.
They included Alfred Luckett, 45, a Jackson resident who snagged a part as an extra during filming in the city’s historic Fondren neighborhood. “I was a service station attendant. I did the windshields. I hope I’m not on the cutting room floor.”
Stone and most of the movie’s cast, save Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the cruel socialite Hilly, and Sissy Spacek, in the role of Hilly’s ditzy, outspoken mother, attended the premiere in which about 1,110 fans and members of the media got a first look at “The Help.”
Actors spoke frankly of the movie in which the characters both challenged and clung to racist societal norms.
“It’s so hard for me to imagine living then,” Stone said.
But if she had, could she have mustered Skeeter’s courage?
“I’d like to know that I’d have that kind of bravery … I’d like to say I would, but I don’t know,” Stone said.
Said Davis: “I don’t feel very courageous in my life. … To me, I prefer the reluctant hero.”
Allison Janney, who as Skeeter’s mother Charlotte is hellbent on getting her daughter married, enjoyed playing :someone who’s a little obsessed.”
“I was intimidated by what Charlotte did,” Janney said. “I can’t imagine doing the same things she did — but I can understand the peer pressure.”
Before the screening, producer Chris Columbus reminded fans of the day’s purpose: raising money for a good cause.
“Guys, you made a dream come true today,” he said. “Thank you so much. We love you.”
Emma Stone might land a role in “Gangster Squad”. The actress, who plays opposite Ryan Gosling in soon-to-be-released romcom “Crazy, Stupid, Love.”, reportedly got along so well with him that he offered her to reunite with him in the crime movie.
“From your lips to God’s ears! But I don’t think anything is official yet,” director Ruben Fleischer said of the rumor when being asked by Celebuzz at 2011 San Diego Comic-Con. When talking about the progress of the movie, he said, “We are in pre-production.”
“Gangstar Squad” is set in a chaotic and corrupt Los Angeles where gangsters are brazenly engaged in shootouts and drive-by shootings. To keep East Coast Mafia out of the city, LAPD formed an anti squad. Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Michael Pena are confirmed to join Gosling in the cast ensemble.
While moviegoers have to wait at least until 2012 to see the gangster movie in theaters, it won’t be long for them to watch Gosling in his romantic comedy. The movie about the “Blue Valentine” actor dealing with marriage problems will arrive in the U.S. on July 29.
Actress Emma Stone has developed a special relationship with Sir Paul Mccartney after the Beatles legend designed the blackbird feet tattoo on her wrist.
The Easy A star admits she still can’t believe MCCartney knows her name - and has Woody Harrelson to thank for an introduction.
She explains, “Woody introduced me to Paul at the beginning of 2009. We went to dinner at his house. Then I wrote him a letter later in the year and he drew three different drawings of blackbird feet on the (reply) letter and my mom, my dad, my brother and I all have it tattooed on our wrist.
“My dad and I have it on our left wrists and my mom and my brother have it on their right wrists. It’s pretty cool.
“I look at it every day. Every time he sees it, he touches it and at the BaftAs, he kissed it. He’s the greatest guy.”
And now it’s her turn to introduce MCCartney to her celebrity friends - she took Crazy Stupid Love co-star Ryan Gosling to see the rocker at the Yankee Stadium in New York on Saturday night (16Jul11).
Stone tells BlogTalkRadio.com, “I’ve seen him multiple times and Ryan and I went to the concert the other night and we got to go backstage and hang out with Paul MCCartney and the tiny harmonica that he hides in his pocket. It was really great. The whole thing is surreal.”
Actress Emma Stone pulled out of plans to re-enact Jennifer Grey’s famous Dirty Dancing leap in her new movie - because bad memories from a childhood gym class prompted a panic attack on-set.
When film fans check out the scene in Crazy Stupid Love, it will look as if Ryan Gosling lifts the actress aloft - just like Patrick Swayze did in the classic romance - but Stone reveals that’s not her.
She tells BlogTalkRadio.com, “I had a panic attack so that was a stunt double from a distance. We tried a couple of times but it didn’t work out for me. Ryan didn’t do anything wrong. He thinks that I was afraid he was gonna drop me.
“When I was seven, I was in gymnastics class and I was standing on the parallel bars and the woman let go of my ankles and I fell forward and broke both of my arms on the mat. And I had this dormant primal fear I didn’t realise until he (Gosling) was lifting me over his head over the front and my arms immediately went, ‘No!’ My body knew that this could break your arms. I really had a full scale hour-long primal panic attack. It was bizarre.
“But they were so nice to me. One of the directors, Glenn Ficarra, and Ryan were sitting with me in a bed in the house we were shooting in rubbing my back like, ‘You’re alright, we’ll get the stunt double to do it.’”
Actress Emma Stone is cooking up a plan to intern at a New York cake shop in a bid to fulfill her dreams of becoming a professional baker.
The 22 year old enjoys creating sweet treats in her spare time, and she’s so taken by the hobby, she’s interested in learning more about the craft from people in the trade, according to Andrew Garfield, her co-star in the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man.
He tells Vanity Fair magazine, “The thing that sums her up for me is she wants to be a baker. She’s serious about it.”
