With the 96th Academy Awards on the horizon, broadcasting live on the 10th of March 2024, blog pages and online threads have been swarming with predictions. For Best Leading Actress, most people can agree Emma Stone is front-and-centre to win in “Poor Things,” with Lily Gladstone riding on her heels for her part in Martin Scorse’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Emma Stone has previously been confined to the sarcastic and witty love interest, balancing good looks with a down-to-earth personality for protagonists like Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling) in Crazy, Stupid, Love or Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) in The Amazing Spider-Man. However, since her early days in Superbad, the actress has proved not just her talent but her versatility.
No matter who Stone is portraying, she does bring a certain kind of quirkiness and likeability (“like a shot of espresso,” as Garfield puts it) to all her characters that are specific to Emma Stone. Even when playing notorious, puppy-murdering villains (Cruella). Her filmography doesn’t stretch on for miles, but Stone has a fair few titles under her belt that establish her as a respected Hollywood A-lister. We’ve narrowed down ten of the best in the run-up to Stone’s (hopeful) second Oscar win.
10. The Help (2011)
When Stone was cast in The Help, she admitted how relieved she was that filmmakers were seeing beyond her romcom typecast. Adapted from the 2009 sleeper hit by Kathryn Stockett, The Help spotlights Stone as an aspiring author who makes a stand against systemic racism. Set in the 1960s, Stone’s frizzy-haired bachelorette Skeeter is lightyears away from her previous roles in indie comedies, bridging the gap between the movie’s white antagonists and their African American employees.
Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 isn’t the place for young white females to piping on about civil rights, but Skeeter nonetheless powers through to write a book from the POV of local maids. The middle-woman between worlds, Skeeter is the black sheep of her privileged girlfriends—self-aware, intellectual, sarcastic, beige, indifferent towards men—but also struggles to gain the trust of “the help.” Luckily, Emma Stone brings her trademark charm to persuade the maids into interviews for her book, subsequently making their voices heard.
9. Maniac (2018)
It’s always fun to spot esteemed actors in their early roles—especially when you’ve seen it before without knowing who they were. Although Stone is mainly associated with movies, she did have a few beginner TV roles, including in well-known sitcoms you probably never noticed her in. Such as a school buddy (or enemy) of Reese in Malcolm in the Middle or the voice of London’s dog in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
Stone’s main television debut is from the Netflix miniseries Maniac. Rather than a kid show cameo, Stone headlines alongside Jonah Hill as participants in a hallucinogenic pharmaceutical trial, reminiscent of the Milgram Experiment. Created by Patrick Somerville, Maniac is more of a mind-bending experience than a TV show, demanding viewers’ attention—which they’ll gladly give to such clever, stylistic, engrossing, tense, retro-futuristic filming. Beyond the trippy visuals and mesmerizingly complex narrative, Maniac’s primary source of praise was thanks to Stone and Hill’s performances, grounding and humanizing the dreamlike plot.
8. Zombieland (2009)
You can tell from interviews alone that Stone is a naturally funny individual—hence all the comedies in her filmography. But these aren’t just cheap, churned-out background noise comedies; there’s a satirical, darkly humorous streak to most of them, including Zombieland. A parody of the zombie genre, Zombieland is directed by Ruben Fleischer and was followed up by a sequel in 2019 (in which Stone reprised her feature role).
The survivors of a mad cow disease epidemic (which turns contractors into zombies) use the names of their hometowns as nicknames to avoid attachment. Yet still, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) falls for the beautiful, tricksy, protective con artist Wichita (Stone) while traveling to an infection-free amusement park. Woody Harrelson leads them all as the rugged, Twinkie-obsessed pro-zombie killer Tallahassee, but his forced machismo is nothing on Wichita’s genuine, leather jacket rebel vibe.
7. Easy A (2010)
Literary geniuses may suss out the plot to Easy A from the protagonist’s name: Olive Penderghast. An anagram for “pretend shag” that Olive uses to break and make her reputation. Easy A is a humorous lesson in embracing your identity and not caring what others think. When Olive lies about losing her virginity, she’s nicknamed a “dirty skank” but doesn’t shy away from her peers. Instead, she embroiders a red A on her clothes in the style of The Scarlet Letter (which stands for “adulterer” in the novel) and struts down the hallway in a corset and heels.
The success of Easy A spawns from its unique premise and smart one-liners, but without Stone in the lead, it could have easily merged into the background of other humdrum teenage comedies. Stone could tap into both the goofy nobody and the popular sex symbol in equal measure, putting herself on the map in Hollywood and bagging a Teen Choice Award.
6. Birdman (2014)
The first thing everybody talks about when discussing Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is its long take. Not just for one scene, but the entire movie. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s one-shot approach astounded viewers, used to simulate real-time authenticity, much like Riggan (Michael Keaton) is trying to do in his new Broadway play adaptation. All in a vain attempt to stop his mid-life crisis in its tracks.
Birdman’s continuous cinematography made the actors’ jobs that much harder. Without the safety net of cuts or reshoots, the cast had to perform to constant perfection as if they were on stage. Stone appears a handful of times as Riggan’s daughter and assistant, trying to claw back her life from drug addiction and memorably breaking out into a furious lecture after being caught smoking. Her acting is so good in this scene, you can feel Riggan’s reaction to her words reflected in Stone’s face without actually seeing him.
5. The Battle of the Sexes (2017)
Battle of the Sexes is a blanket term for any tennis match played between a male and female, but it’s mostly used in the context of a 1973 game between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. The match, held at the Houston Astrodome, was about more than just tennis, prize money or becoming world champion. At its crux, the game was about equality and standing up for women’s rights, signalling a shift in second wave feminism that altered society’s warped views on gender roles.
Spearheading the WTA tour, King (Stone) took up Riggs’ (Steve Carell) challenge for any woman to try and beat him, demanding the prize money be equal for both sexes. Just like the galleries cheer King on beside the court, The Battle of the Sexes is a crowd-pleasing dramedy, betting safely on its talented, high-caliber actors to carry the box office (unlike Riggs, whose gambling problems pit him against a woman half his age in the first place).
4. Cruella (2021)
Most actors nowadays have their hand in some kind of MCU or Disney franchise, and for Stone, it’s the live-action origin story of Cruella de Vil. Bringing such an iconic villain and Halloween costume staple to life—in a way that’s both sympathetic and loyal to her antagonistic character—was quite a task, but Stone pulled it off with ease, even while faking a British accent.
Craig Gillespie envisioned the split-dyed, monochrome queen of evil as a wide-eyed fashion buff who dreams of selling her own clothes. Running away to become a Dickensian pick-pocketer in 1960s London, Estrella levels up to a haute couture designer plotting a robbery, mirroring the era moving into a 1970s new wave. From the soundtrack to the characters, Cruella is vicious, punky, and exciting, putting Stone’s girl-next-door reputation to bed.
3. The Favourite (2018)
Emma Stone is known for being a touch eccentric, and her film canon displays an astute ability to marry humor with drama in just the right way. This makes her the perfect casting choice (unlike her whitewashed casting in Aloha) for Yorgos Lanthimos—an auteur filmmaker quickly making his way to the ranks of Wes Anderson. Lanthimos champions all things weird and wonderful; he treads taboo paths with confidence and isn’t afraid of offbeat characters and awkward silences.
The Favourite fictionalized the events of 18th century Britain, where Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) ruled unsteadily during a war with France. Coleman’s childish, tantrum-throwing, unstable portrayal of Anne could have breezily overshadowed the rest of the cast. However, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz stand up as powerful female players in this messy, period-age love triangle, with all three actresses earning Oscar nominations.
2. La La Land (2016)
Building on the previous chemistry from Crazy, Stupid, Love, Stone, and Gosling’s third collaboration swept the Oscars, with the film even winning one extra Oscar by mistake and having to be retracted. La La Land is one of those rare musicals that musical haters can enjoy. That’s how much the actors draw us in, making us giggle and swoon and tap along to the not-so-cheesy tunes (compared to other musicals, anyway).
Many of us have a sentimentalised view of Hollywood: dazzling starlets, boundless opportunities, sunny landscapes and far-out dream chasing. Romance and art and twinkly night skies. The reality is very different, but what’s cinema, if not a little escapism? Damien Chazelle gives us the rose-tinted LA of our imagination, where traffic jams turn into flash mobs, then strikes it through with a vein of relatability. In real life, the guy doesn’t always get the girl, and it’s Stone and Gosling’s performance of the aspiring actor/musician couple that makes us wish he did.
1. Poor Things (2023)
After the success of The Favourite, Lanthimos teamed up with Stone once again to knock out viewers and critics alike. This time, Emma Stone takes the driver’s seat as the central Bella Baxter—a woman who’s had the brain of a baby implanted into her body. A crowning jewel of the Greek Weird Wave, Lanthimos gives us an utterly original, bizarre, and absurdist dystopian sci-fi—not just narratively, but visually.
The lavish wardrobe, blend of period and futuristic set designs and characters that act completely out of the norm means that Poor Things isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you can’t deny it’s masterful creativity. Lanthimos gets to the nitty-gritty of the human experience (first times, new cities, embarrassing sex stories) in unconventional ways—a way most actors could never carry off. Shaking off the dust of high-school hallways from Superbad and Easy A, Stone’s captivating performance of a fearless woman-child experiencing life for the first time is nothing short of Oscar-worthy.
