Coming as a surprise to almost no one, Emma Stone has been named Best Actress at the 2024 EE BAFTAs for her role in Poor Things, a Frankenstein-esque tale of a woman named Bella (Stone) forced to come to terms with the world again after eccentric surgeon Goodwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) brings her back to life after a suicide attempt.
Emma has been a regular, and beloved, fixture on our screens after her feature film debut in Superbad way back in 2007, and stars in some now cult movies including Easy A, a teen rom-com based on the novel The Scarlet Letter. For that role, Emma earned her first ever BAFTA nomination in 2010, the BAFTA Rising Star award, but it was actually Kristen Stewart who took home the trophy that year.
Speaking in the BAFTA Winners' Room after being named Best Actress Emma shared her excitement at winning saying, 'I feel really good. A little shaky - I think it's a combination of jet lag and excitement.'
She later added, 'You put a lot of your heart and soul into making a film, a lot of people are away from their families for months at a time and you bond with this group of people and the excitement of it being received or seen or loved by people is immensely meaningful.'
Now, as a result of her incredible BAFTAs win, many are now tipping Emma Stone to win big at the Oscars on 10 March 2024 where she is again nominated for Best Actress.
Poor Things – which Emma also served on as a producer – is nominated for a total of 11 awards at the Academy Awards. Grateful for the film’s nominations Emma said, ‘Eleven nominations for Poor Things feels like a surreal dream. I am beyond grateful to the Academy for including me as both an actress and producer among this group of exceptional nominees and for recognizing our film in so many categories.’
She later added, ‘The team of artists who contributed to Poor Things gave it everything and I am forever thankful for the opportunity to play Bella and see the world through her eyes. She has shown me that life is so much more than just sugar and violence.’
2024 isn’t the first time that Emma Stone has been nominated for an Oscar. Her first nomination came in 2014 where she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Birdman. Her first win however, came in 2016 with a Best Actress win for La La Land.
Can she keep up the momentum? The latest odds currently have Emma Stone in first place, but Lily Gladstone - nominated for her role in Flowers of the Killer Moon – is a very close second.
According to Entertainment Weekly Emma will likely just tip the win. They say, ‘Keeping up with category tradition, Best Actress is perhaps the most interesting acting race of the year — thanks to the atypical contenders vying for the top prize. Lily Gladstone made history by becoming the first Native actress to score a nod in this category, and she seemed likeliest to win as the race kicked off last year.’
‘Poor Things' star and Academy favorite Emma Stone, however, rocked the narrative with her off-kilter work in Yorgos Lanthimos' peculiar emotional epic, charting her Frankenstein-esque character's evolution from dawdling infant to fully realized feminist. Purely on the surface, there's not as much of an outward arc in Gladstone's similarly sublime performance, and when voting on a winner, the whole of the Academy's base might gravitate toward a performance they can feel and see written all over Stone via makeup, costumes, and more transformational elements.’
Daisy Hall is a News and Entertainment writer on Grazia, specialising in TV and film meaning that you can count on Daisy for the latest (and best) recommendations.