by It’s not to say you’ve never seen a performance like Emma Stone in Poor Things. In this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel, from New Greek Weird director Yorgos Lanthimos, she plays Bella Baxter, a grown woman with the mind of a baby who embarks on a journey of self-discovery through the steamy landscapes of Victorian era punk. It’s a tour de force of mild-mannered slapstick and great wordplay, serving up a believable, honest character arc. And it’s very, very funny.
Critics are falling over themselves in search of masterpieces. “A stone goes for the barrier, the pressure of the border broke.” “Absolutely amazing.” “A hilarious performance beyond the next level.” More than one writer has used the word “fearless” – a loosely-concealed code for the kind of nudity and wanton sexuality that most Hollywood actors shy away from today. The film is an Irish-British-American co-production, but the vibe is European art. The actor will surely receive a fourth nomination for the Academy.
“Above all, this film is the central character of Bella Baxter, this incredible creature, and she wouldn’t exist without Emma Stone, another incredible creature,” Lanthimos said while accepting the Golden Lion at a festival Venice film in September.
Fifteen years ago, who could have predicted such a turn in the career of a green-eyed 18-year-old who dyed her hair naturally blonde for her film debut in the gormless teen comedy Superbad? But she already had enough talent to convince you that Jonah Hill’s kick could at least turn out to be attractive, leading to a huge nerd following. Over the years she’s fine-tuned a mix of goofy girl-next-door glamor and comedic timing into a charmingly charming persona that’s not a million miles from the likes of Irene Dunne or Carole Lombard.
She was born Emily Jean Stone in 1988, in Scottsdale, Arizona, later admitting to The Tonight Show why she changed her name: “I wanted to be called Emma because of Baby Spice.” The trademark husky voice is the result of suffering colic baby, and she developed “too much” from sucking her thumb as a child, requiring seven years of dental braces; you can still detect the ghost of a lisp in his unimaginable orthodontics. She describes herself growing up as loud and bossy, wanting to be Steve Martin or John Candy, and her main ambition was to host Saturday Night Live. She would eventually achieve her ambition five times over.
She turned in engaging supporting turns, including as a brooding student in The House Bunny, rocking a 1980s Madonna outfit (with dental braces) in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and a charming interest in horror comedy in Zombieland. But the breakthrough was her first leading role, as Olive Penderghast in Easy A, a high school remake of The Scarlet Letter. Olive is shamed by peers who believe (mistakenly) that she has lost her virginity, but who use her bad reputation to expose hypocrisy. The story is wobbly, but Stone is absolutely adorable. Time magazine named it one of the 10 best performances of 2010, praising “the actor’s gift for making sassy dialogue look natural”.
Meanwhile, changing direction, she appeared in The Help as an aspiring journalist documenting racism in 1963 Mississippi by talking to African-American wives. It was a hit at the box office despite reducing the matches to support players in a white savior story. The friendly romcom Crazy, Stupid, Love, his first collaboration with Ryan Gosling, was less problematic. By this time everyone assumed she was a redhead, but she returned to her natural blonde to play Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man, an unnecessary reboot, but enhanced by the palpable chemistry between Stone and her co-star , Andrew Garfield, with whom she was romantically involved off screen as well.
Stone showed her best horse qualities in a few sub-period films: slinky 1940s dresses in Gosling’s second collaboration for the undercooked Gangster Squad, and a 1920s flapper outfit for Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight, which didn’t help with him. the 28-year age gap between Stone and her leading man. “Colin Firth and I talked about the age gap, which was huge, absolutely, because he was born the same year as my dad,” she told Vulture. But she won acclaim for a raw, raw, unfiltered supporting performance as Michael Keaton’s ex-junkie daughter in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) with Alejandro González Iñárritu, which won her her first Academy Award. nomination.
In the winter of 2014, Stone made her Broadway debut, taking over for Michelle Williams as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. “Although Stone is even less of a singer than Williams, she works her way out of every tight spot,” Variety said. A few screens later: Irrational Man, another Woody Allen flop, and, more damagingly, Cameron Crowe’s romantic comedy Aloha, set in Hawaii, in which Stone was cast as Captain Allison Ng, a character of Chinese descent and native Hawaiian. The Asian American Media Action Network called the film whitewashing “an insult to the diverse culture and fabric of Hawaii”. When Sandra Oh claimed at the 2019 Golden Globe Awards that Crazy Rich Asians was “the first Asian-American-led studio film since Ghost in the Shell and Aloha”, Stone was heard in the audience, shouting “Sorry! “
But this was the prelude to Emma Stone’s peak. First up was singing and dancing with Gosling in the fortunately received La La Land, even if her best actress Oscar was overshadowed by the brawl in which Damien Chazelle’s bitter musical romance was accidentally announced as best picture in instead of the real winner, Moonlight.
Stone gained 15lbs of muscle to play Billie Jean King in the underrated tennis biopic Battle of the Sexes, and worked with Lanthimos for the first time in the stylish costume romp The Favourite, succeeding an English accent as a poor cousin and rival Lady Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) at the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). Cruella didn’t seem promising on paper, but this origin story for one of the greats of fiction, set in the fashion world of London during the punk era, turned out to be a hit for its great actress. to say, which invested the title character’s vengeful fury with layers. with tragic nostalgia, and Jenny Beavan’s Oscar-winning costumes exude swagger.
As of 2021, she is married to Dave McCary, director of Saturday Night Live, and had a child with Dave McCary, director of Saturday Night Live, but she has achieved a smart balance between red carpet poses, without taking herself too seriously -really in interviews, and keep their private life under control. wraps. As if moving effortlessly between comic, art house and superhero pictures wasn’t enough, she’s expanded her range to television, reuniting with her Superbad co-star Jonah Hill for the streaming series Maniac, and later nominated for Golden Globe for The Curse. , in which she and Nathan Fielder play a cringe-worthy couple filming a home improvement reality show in a New Mexico town.
What else? She worked with Lanthimos again in an anthology film, now in post-production, and a Cruella sequel is on the horizon. Poor Things is going to be a tough act to follow, but if her stunning new performance in The Curse is anything to go by, she’ll be up for it.
