The best Emma Stone performances to watch after ‘Poor Things’
With the Academy Awards looming, Emma Stone is considered one of the front-runners to take home her second victory for her astonishing performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things.
It’s her fifth nomination overall, and having already scooped the corresponding Bafta and a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical’, it’s looking increasingly likely that the race for the Oscar is a straight shootout between Stone and Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone.
Even though she’s barely even a decade and a half into her big screen career, Stone is already lauded as one of the best actors in modern cinema, nothing a succession of acclaimed performances in a myriad of wildly different movies, with the recurring theme being that she’ll never be anything less than impressive.
As a testament to her range, the following five turns have very little in common beyond Stone being the person giving them, offering an insight into just how well-rounded her talents are.
Five must-see Emma Stone performances:
5. Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010)
The teen comedy has been a Hollywood staple for decades, and it was fitting that Stone would land her very first major leading role in the genre, considering she made her feature film debut in it three years earlier when Superbad was released.
Although it ticks several of the boxes associated with the medium, Will Gluck’s Easy A thrived on its self-awareness and sly deconstruction of the high school tropes, with Stone’s Olive embracing the rumour making the rounds claiming she’s of a highly promiscuous nature.
The precocious teenager is a trope that’s been done to death, but Stone injects the character with genuine heart and a vulnerability that’s always lurking just beneath the surface, no matter how hard she tries to keep it under wraps. A Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actress- Musical or Comedy’ followed, with Stone proving at the very first attempt she had more than enough talent to be a bankable lead.
4. Battle of the Sexes (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2017)
A turning point of sorts, true-life biopic Battle of the Sexes saw the star deliberately shy away from her more comedic-leaning screen performer, with the film marking her first time playing a leading role in a straightforward drama, which she subsequently knocked out of the park.
It was the first time she’d played a real person, too, and her understatedly charismatic turn as Billie Jean King makes an excellent foil for Steve Carrel’s braggadocious and over-confident Bobby Riggs. In Stone’s hands, it’s as far away from being an impersonation or caricature as possible, underlining the range and versatility of her talents.
Battle of the Sexes is far from the greatest biographical drama ever made, but in terms of how it relayed to audiences that Stone was more than capable of disappearing completely into a character in the form of cinema she’d never explored before, it nonetheless stands out as one of her most important performances.
3. Cruella (Craig Gillespie, 2021)
There was absolutely no need for Cruella to exist other than to satiate Disney‘s desire to refresh as many of its animated classics as possible to continue mining them in live-action. Seeing as Glenn Close had already brought Cruella de Vil to life in two movies of her own, the origin story route was taken.
Beyond the ludicrous motivation of her mother being murdered by a pair of rogue Dalmatians, Stone sinks her teeth into the part with malicious and immaculately costumed relish, dialling the campiness of her performance way past 11 to pitch it to the cheap seats.
In the end, Cruella turned out much better than it had any right to be, which is largely down to Stone. It was her first time anchoring an expensively assembled blockbuster, made even more impressive by the fact nobody was particularly interested in the project until they were blown away by a comedic tour-te-force that’s just the right side of kitschy and radiates star power.
2. La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Winning an Academy Award for her performance, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land was an ode to Los Angeles that was instantly greeted as one of the most popular romances and musicals of the modern era, due in no small part to Stone’s incandescent turn.
Her aspiring actor Mia meets Ryan Gosling’s jazz pianist Sebastian, setting off a star-crossed romance that thrives on the sparkling chemistry generated by its powerhouse central pairing. Tapping into a distinct sort of charisma that was decidedly modern while entirely evocative of Hollywood’s Golden Age, it was a delicate balancing act to pull off.
Of course, Stone managed it with aplomb, delivering showstopping song-and-dance numbers and heart-wrenching pathos with the greatest of ease. It won her a first Oscar, but it’s becoming readily apparent that it won’t be her last.
1. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
Stone’s first collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos opened the door to a newfound creative partnership poised to bring out the very best in both, with Poor Things merely the next chapter in an ongoing journey.
As well as the short film Bleat, Stone recently entered talks to reunite again with Lanthimos on his remake of madcap Korean sci-fi fantasy Save the Green Planet. Having received two Oscar nominations for her efforts, it’s easy to see why she’s so keen on remaining in his orbit.
Stone’s Abigail first enters The Favourite as a rather awkward presence, but as the story progresses, she begins to show an increasing number of new sides, revealing herself to be an intellectual match for Rachel Weisz’s Lady Sarah. Expert-level comic timing, malevolent machinations, and backstabbing soon become the orders of the day in a phenomenally well-rounded performance that instantly made her Lanthimos’ muse.
