You can’t blame Emma Stone for playing it safe. The 35-year-old has risen to fame with teen comedies (“Easy to Have”), RomComs (“Crazy, Stupid, Love”) and superhero films (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) and is currently buzzing with “Poor Things” – as Bella Baxter, who is brought back to life after a suicide, has her unborn baby’s brain implanted and sets off on a journey of self-discovery that doesn’t exactly fall short on the sex front, which is quite explicitly defined by Hollywood standards. FILMSTARTS editor-in-chief Christoph Petersen gave the rare maximum rating of 5 out of 5 stars in his review.
The Oscar winner, who is currently hoping for her second Academy Award, also proved with ‘The Favorite’ (also from ‘Poor Things’ director Yorgos Lanthimos) and ‘Cruella’ that she is increasingly developing a soft spot for eccentric characters. However, according to her own statements, she did not play her “toughest role” in any of the films mentioned, nor in “Birdman” or the critically acclaimed series “The curse“…
…but in the theater! Before making her Oscar-winning musical debut on the big screen in “La La Land,” Emma Stone tried her luck on Broadway. In ‘Cabaret’ she played Sally Bowles – the role that gave Liza Minnelli her international breakthrough in the 1972 film of the same name. The actress admitted that the experience of being on one of the most famous stages in the world did not necessarily live up to her expectations…
“Broadway was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Stone says. “Doing cabaret was really the hardest thing there was. I thought it would be easier – only three hours a day, you don’t have to go to the set, you go home afterwards. But you have to live like a monk. You keep losing your voice, or at least I lost mine because it broke. It was damn hard.”
Still, she also took positives from the experience: “I would say it made me fall in love with acting in a different way,” the “Superbad” star said. Stone probably won’t be returning to the big show stage anytime soon! Her third collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos has already been announced: in the episode ‘Kinds Of Kindness’ she will be in front of the camera again with her ‘Poor Things’ screen partner Willem Dafoe, but also actors such as Jesse Plemons and Margaret Qualley.