Emma Stone, the 22-year-old girl from Scottsdale, Arizona, has indeed gone a long way.
The first time we met Emma, she was just starting to be known as the new “it” girl who was both funny and a great actress. She was bubbly and gracious.
Fast forward to just a year later and a sophisticated, more confident and serious Emma is facing us, dressed in a designer outfit with glitters on her shoulder. An entourage of publicists, make-up artist and manager follow her around. She talks more with poise.
Emma, who is portraying the feisty journalist Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan in the much-talked-about film, “The Help,” is pitting talents with the likes of Oscar and Golden Globe nominee Viola Davis (“Doubt”). Jessica Chastain (“The Tree of Life”), Bryce Dallas Howard (“Spider-Man 3,” “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”) and Octavia Spencer (“Ugly Betty”).
We asked Emma how director Tate Taylor, in his debut film, managed all the women in the cast.
“I can’t imagine anyone managing all these women better than Tate,” Emma said and laughed. “He knew exactly what he was doing. He knows exactly what to say. He and writer Kathryn Stockett (whose novel of the same title the film was based on) have been best friends since they were six years old and he was next to her while she was writing that book. She was next to him while he was adapting the screenplay. I don’t think anyone had a doubt in their minds that he was the person to direct it. He was the only man for the job and so he knew exactly what he wanted. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was the only person that could have probably dealt with all of us at once.”
Emma described her life as a celebrity: Being followed by the paparazzi, being careful what to say or watching how she moves and all that stuff. “All my life, when I was growing up, I have always imagined myself being in the movies,” she admitted.
“It is nothing like what I imagined. It is wonderful but it is just different. I realized you don’t really know what it’s going to feel like until you are in it. My life is not unlivable by any means. I can walk down the street. I can go places and people don’t say anything. Maybe they say something a little more than they used to but it has not hindered me in any way."
“The only thing I have, fear of like crippling phobia fear, is of loss of total privacy because I don’t know how you can function as a human being without privacy. I don’t know how you can watch an actor, know everything about their lives, and believe them as a character. That is a huge fear because I am a very private person and at the same time, I want to be an honest person. I want to be truthful about who I am. So that balance is difficult to maneuver and something that I hopefully will be able to find more peace with. But right now, it has not been too daunting quite yet.”
Emma revealed that she got full support from her parents when she decided to join show business. “I was really lucky to have an unbelievable support system in my parents and I’m from Phoenix. They have no connections to the industry and probably wanted to be the furthest thing from actors. For some reason, they understood what it was that I wanted and that it was what I was passionate about. They supported me.”
She explained, “My father started a general contracting company in 1986 and they build hotels and office buildings. My mother worked in PR but when she had me and my brother, she just became a full-time mom and so the level of support was astronomical. They never gave me false hope. They never said you are going to be the best. They were very realistic. But they were understanding and backed me all the way. I was lucky.”
The redhead confessed that she looked at her relationships with men in the same way that she handled the choice of her roles. “My relationships with men are almost the same as my relationships with roles,” she disclosed. “I always compare finding roles to relationships now. Sometimes you think you are in the mood for this. Then you read a script and it jumps out at you and you’ve no idea why. You didn’t know that that would resonate with you and you just got to play that part. It is like that with relationships. I’m definitely not closed off to anything. I don’t claim to know what it is that is going to make me happy and I’m always open to that.”
Emma revealed that she got the acting bug early in life. “I did a play in first grade and that did it,” she disclosed. “I really liked making people laugh. If I lived in medieval times, I would have wanted to be a court jester not an opera singer or anything. I would have just wanted to make people laugh. I was a little ham for the most part. I watched many comedies with my parents.
“It was stage acting and sketch comedy that I always loved. I loved musical theater even though I cannot really hold a tune. I have nodules so it makes it difficult. I saw a lot of Cameron Crowe, Woody Allen and Hal Ashby movies. They affected me so deeply and I thought if I could be part of something like that, it would really be special. If I could tell stories that affected people as deeply as these things have affected me, I would be so grateful. That is also the reason why I would love to produce some day because I don’t necessarily need to be in them. I just really love movies as a form of art and inspiration. So I am really lucky that I am a part of this industry.”
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Larry Joe Campbell Joe Pantoliano John Singleton Bill Condon Salman Rusdhie