Emma Stone is the Hollywood dream girl that we wish to be friends with. Jonah Hill, her co-star in Superbad, once said, ‘she’s not full of shit, she’s not pretentious, and she’s electrically smart,’ and it is this coolness and wit that has landed her huge film roles and enormous admiration within the industry and from those who enjoy her films (hello).
Before now she has starred in The Amazing Spider-man, The Help, Easy A, Birdman and Crazy Stupid Love, to name a few. Her latest project, La La Land, set to be released next month, also stars Ryan Gosling and is a romantic musical set in the glimmering lights of old Hollywood, about two dreamers who are trying to make it to the big time. Both Stone and Gosling are nominated for Golden Globes, and are predicted Oscar nominees too, so if you haven’t already listened to the soundtrack, what are you waiting for?
Emma’s fierce confidence and charm did not come naturally to her, though, as she revealed in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. She describes her childhood as being anxiety-ridden and full of crippling panic attacks. ‘My brain [was] naturally zooming 30 steps ahead to the worst-case scenario,’ she explains. ‘My anxiety was constant. I would ask my mom a hundred times how the day would lay out. What time she was going to drop me off? Where was she going to be? What would happen at lunch? Feeling nauseous. At a certain point, I couldn’t go to friends’ houses anymore – I could barely get out the door to school.’
Her parents took her to see a therapist, who encouraged her to draw what her anxiety felt like. ‘I drew a little green monster on my shoulder that speaks to me in my ear and tells me all these things that aren’t true. And every time I listen to it, it grows bigger. If I listen to it enough, it crushes me. But if I turn my head and keep doing what I’m doing it shrinks and fades away.’
It was this that propelled Emma to begin acting, as immersing herself in the embodiment of a character or scenario removed from her own channeled her concentration away from the monster: ‘You have to be present in improv, and that’s the antithesis of anxiety.’
Soon, her love and talent for acting was unmistakable, and her parents uprooted to Hollywood. After bagging herself some small roles in TV shows she was cast as Jules in the hit comedy Superbad, with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, when she was 19-years-old. Fast forward a few years and she is Hollywood’s It girl, has had a loving romance with Andrew Garfield - of which both parties have admitted in recent interviews that they still love each other - and is best friends with Jennifer Lawrence. Sounds like a fairytale to us.
READ MORE: 'La La Land's Director Reveals The Secret To Emma Stone And Ryan Gosling's Chemistry
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