The role that changed everything for Emma Stone: “A bit of a game-changer”
Winning multiple Academy Awards is something most performers can only dream of during their active years. For Emma Stone, she achieved that dream at just 35 years old. The actor, who picked up a statuette for both La La Land and Poor Things, is one of the most accomplished of her generation. A creative tour de force who is more than capable of drawing in crowds for leftfield art house to blockbusters; there is seemingly no limit to Stone’s potential.
Considering she’s achieved so much success at such a young age, it should come as no surprise that Stone has been acting professionally since she was a teenager. While her first major film role was in the noughties teen comedy Superbad, she could be seen prior to that on TV shows like The New Partridge Family. One of her earliest gigs, when she was still going by her real name of Emily Stone, was voicing a dog for an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Hey, we’ve all gotta start somewhere.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the role that Stone herself said put her on the path to superstardom. In an interview hosted by Marie Claire in 2017, she spoke about what it was like to play tennis legend Billie Jean King in the film Battle of the Sexes. As she told co-star Sarah Silverman, despite having already won an Oscar at this point, this was the movie where things all came together.
“The role of Billie Jean was a bit of a game-changer,” she confessed, explaining, “I am very nervous to communicate my opinions most of the time, especially publicly. I second-guess myself a lot, and I’m prone to anxiety. She is so direct and confident in the way that she communicates what she believes is right. To be able to step into that for a while was a pretty powerful experience. It’s something that I still don’t feel entirely comfortable with, but it was also one of the great parts about playing her. That’s one of my big personal struggles.”
Battle of the Sexes is about an infamous 1973 tennis match between high-flying women’s star King and former men’s champ Bobby Riggs. Having defeated Margaret Smith Court earlier that year, 55-year-old Riggs (played by Steve Carell in the movie) challenged 29-year-old King to another exhibition bout. King’s victory over Riggs is seen as one of the greatest achievements in the history of women’s sports, and it made her an instant icon.
The movie itself did alright, too. Though it didn’t make its money back at the box office, critics were big fans. Both Stone and Carell were nominated for acting prizes at the Golden Globes, with the former receiving praise from LGBTQ+ groups for her portrayal of King, who was in a closeted gay relationship at the time of the film’s events.
Stone does a fantastic job in Battle of the Sexes, delivering one of her career-best performances. Still, from a purely external vantage point, there’s nothing to suggest that it was as important as she would later reveal. Acting is an incredibly personal business. You never know what’s going through a performer’s mind when they’re embodying a character, or what the process is doing to them as a person. She might have taken on many more high-profile characters in her time, but Billie Jean King will always mean something special to the woman who portrayed her on screen.
