“Flaws are my favorite part of people, usually.”–Emma Stone.
From the moment she burst onto the screen in the hilarious Superbad, it was clear that Emma Stone was going to be a force in Hollywood. She followed it up with hilarious turns in Zombieland and Easy A, and she's crossed over to dramas and blockbusters since, putting an Oscar for Best Actress in her path in the process. But there's more to Stone than just the awesome movies she's appeared in—from her hilariously ambitious childhood to her ultra-secretive personal life to her...Farmville addiction(?)—there's a lot to know about this fiery redhead. Here are 42 sultry facts about Emma Stone.
Facts About Emma Stone
1. Rock Bottom
She auditioned for the part of Claire Bennet on Heroes, but lost the role to Hayden Panettiere. After years of auditions, she said that this was her hardest Hollywood moment.
2. Heavy Stuff
Stone lived with anxiety and panic attacks when she was a kid, and through therapy, learned to cope with it. Her mantra became "I Am Bigger Than My Anxiety," and she even wrote herself a little book with the same title, all to help deal with it.
3. We've Been Lied to
Stone's real name is Emily Jean Stone. She had to change it to “Emma” because her real name was already taken when she went to sign up with the Screen Actors Guild.
4. I Could've Been a Contender
Before choosing “Emma,” the actress considered two other contenders for a possible SAG name: Riley Stone and Emily J. Stone.
5. Blondes Have More Fun…As Redheads
Stone is actually a natural blonde. Judd Apatow suggested the actress dye her hair red, and she’s been pretty true to that hue ever since.
6. Breaking the Habit
Emma Stone sucked her thumb until she was 11 years old. This may have something to do with the fact that she later had to wear braces...for seven whole years!
7. That Voice!
The reason Emma Stone has a such a sexy, husky voice is because...she was a colicky baby. Colic is when a baby cries on a regular basis for no apparent reason. Stone developed nodules on her vocal cords in her infanthood, which is what caused the hoarseness in her voice.
8. Choice of Character
When she was 12, she auditioned for the Nickelodeon show All That. She had to make up some characters for the audition, so she chose to play a cheerleader who couldn’t spell, and a possessed babysitter.
9. Acting Inspiration
Emma Stone revealed that four films in particular inspired her to pursue an acting career: The Jerk, Annie Hall, Beetlejuice, and Hocus Pocus.
10. Quarter Ghost
Emma Stone claims that her dead grandfather (whom she has never met) keeps leaving quarters around her house.
.jpg){kind=link}
11. She Really (Microsoft) Excelled
In order to convince her parents to allow her to pursue an acting career, Emma created a PowerPoint presentation in high school titled “Project Hollywood.” It was obviously very effective. Well played.
12. Dog Eat Dog
Emma Stone’s first job was baking dog treats at a dog bakery—which is not a bakery where they bake dogs, in case you were wondering.
13. The High School Experience
Even though Easy A was a hugely popular high school movie, Emma Stone was unfamiliar with the high school experience when she made it. She was home-schooled starting at age 12, and convinced her mother to move to Los Angeles with her at 15.
14. Girl Power!
She’s a huge Spice Girls fan, and says they taught her about girl power. Baby Spice (Emma Bunton) is her favorite member, but she got teary when Scary Spice (Melanie Brown) sent her a surprise video message during an interview.
15. Ruff Start
Emma was the voice of Ivana Tipton—London Tipton’s dog—on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. She was also the voice of the dog Mazie in the film Marmaduke.
.jpg){kind=link}
16. If at First, You Don’t Succeed…
In 2007, she was on a failed TV show called Drive that was canceled after only four episodes, with the remaining two moving online. It might have been a low for Stone, but luckily for her, Superbad was released shortly after.
17. Backup Career Plan
Emma has previously stated that if she didn’t make it as an actress, she would have wanted to be a journalist. Why? According to her, “It’s the same kind of idea. You’re looking at people and breaking down why they work the way they work.”
.jpg){kind=link}
18. Secret Talents
Stone learned American Sign Language when she was young (although she's since forgotten some). She also knows how to play the bass—she learned for her role in the movie The Rocker.
19. Puppy Love
The dog that Gwen (Emma’s character) walks in The Amazing Spider-Man was adopted by Andrew Garfield and Stone in 2013.
20. Big Macca
She once went to Sir Paul McCartney’s house with her Zombieland co-star Woody Harrelson. McCartney made them veggie burgers.
21. More Zombies
Her favorite part of filming Zombieland was the opportunity to destroy things, and all the glass she got to break in the scene where they visit a store.
22. Worst Nightmares
Emma’s biggest fear is not being able to lead a relatively “normal” life due to fame. For that reason, she's stayed mostly tight-lipped about her personal life.
23. Family Matters
Stone’s mother, Krista, is at a stay-at-home mum, and her father, Jeff, is a contractor. She also has a younger brother named Spencer. Coincidentally, Stone's character's real name in Zombieland is Krista.
Emma is of Swedish descent on her father’s side and has Pennsylvania Dutch, English, Irish, and Scottish roots on her mother’s.
24. Speechwriter
In the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man, the graduation speech given by Gwen Stacy was actually written by Emma Stone, who, given her white-hot career, will probably be giving a lot more speeches in the future.
25. iEmma
Emma Stone is such a big fan of iCarly that she even got a cameo on the show in 2012.
26. Starstruck Moments
Being surrounded by celebrities is not new to Emma Stone, but even Oscar winners can get star-struck in front of some of the industry’s greats. The actress was allegedly completely incapacitated when she met Tom Hanks, Lorne Michaels, and Diane Keaton—bursting into tears in front of each of them.
27. The Purple One
Stone once played tambourine with Prince on stage at a party.
28. Ups and Downs
Emma competed on a VH1 reality series In Search of the New Partridge Family! when she was only 15, winning the role of Laurie Partridge. The competition reality show was supposed to lead to a series called The New Partridge Family, but the pilot was never picked up.
29. Double Ouch
When Stone was only 7 years old, she broke both of her arms falling off parallel bars in while doing gymnastics.
30. Gal Pals
She’s good friends with Jennifer Lawrence, Martha MacIsaac, who also appeared in Superbad, and Sugar Lyn Beard. Beard may be best known for her distinctively squeaky-sounding voice—she was co-host of Canadian TV show The Zone, and more recently, appeared in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
31. Power Pair
Stone and Ryan Gosling have starred in three movies together so far: Crazy, Stupid, Love, Gangster Squad, and La La Land. They were also in talks to star in Focus, but in the end, Will Smith and Margot Robbie were cast instead.
32. Those Pipes Though
La La Land isn’t the first film that Stone hassungg in. She sang “I Know What Boys Like” in The House Bunny and “Knock On Wood” in Easy A.
33. Webcam It
For her Easy A audition, Stone recorded a webcam monologue and sent it in. She spent hours recording different versions of the same short segment before her roommate begged her to just send it in already.
34. Not Quite White
In 2015, the producers of Aloha cast the decidedly not-Hawaiian and not-Asian Emma Stone as the Hawaiian and Asian character, Alison Ng. The film received a fair amount of criticism for whitewashing. Stone herself felt like “the butt of many jokes” for her part and tried to defend her casting by saying, “The character was not supposed to look like her background, which was a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese.” Her input was met lukewarm response.
35. Words of Wisdom
She says the best piece of advice she’s ever received is “Stay irrepressibly true to yourself and be tenacious about finding ways to manifest the truest form of you.”
36. Love Stays Strong
Stone broke up with Andrew Garfield, her The Amazing Spider-Man co-star and boyfriend of four years, in 2015. In 2016, Emma said that though they’re no longer together, she still loves and cares for Andrew. It’s clear that Garfield still has quite a bit of affection for Stone too, based on the look of adoration he gave her during her Oscar win for Best Actress in La La Land, which also won the Oscar for Best Pict—oh, sorry, that was Moonlight.
37. Goodbye, Facebook
Stone deleted her Facebook after she got too addicted to FarmVille. That game was truly a soul-stealing pit.
38. Take These Broken Wings and Learn to Fly
In 2008, when her career was the rise following Superbad, Stone was dealt a crushing blow. Her mother, to whom she is particularly close, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, her mother beat the disease, and the pair went on to get matching bird feet tattoos, inspired by The Beatles’ song “Blackbird” and drawn by Sir Paul McCartney himself.
39. Let Me Catch My Breath
Emma claimed that she was “humiliated” after the filming of the fake sex scene in Easy A. She said, “I can’t even simulate sex without dying," referring to the fact that she had a bad asthma attack after the scene, which involved a lot of jumping and shouting.
Medical staff even had to hook her up to an oxygen tank.
"Oh, for the love, I can't even simulate sex without dying!" Stone jokingly admitted. "I had a little asthma attack, without any prior knowledge that I had asthma, during the scene where we had to jump up and down for hours and hours screaming and yelling on the bed. [It] was humiliating, because it was the second day of shooting.
40. Speaking of Sex Scenes
Is it a spoiler alert is the movie is Oscar-nominated? We're not exactly talking MCU here...either way, in The Favourite, Stone's character does her best to seduce Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, and she's revealed the hilarious details behind the making of their steamy love scene. Colman had to have a sponge placed between her legs in order to properly simulate the movement between the two characters, and Stone said she couldn't stop laughing while manipulating the sponge and listening to Colman make...pleasured noises.
41. Beauty Is Pain
It wasn't all fun and games on the set of The Favourite. Stone had to wear a corset every day as part of her costume, and she revealed that she couldn't properly breathe while wearing it for the entire first month of shooting! If she was able to breathe a sigh of relief on the 31st day, it didn't last for long—she also confessed that her organs actually shifted after that first month in the corset. Hope she got a bonus!
42. The Mystery of John the Orchestra Guy
Stone and Jennifer Lawrence are friends now, but their relationship started in a bizarre way—they both got cryptic texts from the same mysterious source. They'd both receive texts from a number they began to refer to as "John the Orchestra Guy," who would write them contextless messages saying things like "I'm running late on my way to the soundstage. Can you warm up the orchestra for me?" Here's hoping the message eventually found it's way to the right person and warmed up the orchestra!