ON a night when Hollywood’s A-list finally returned to the full-on glitter of parties, awards, dresses and diamonds for the first big awards since 2023’s writers and actors strike, nothing was sweeter than the sight of female friends celebrating each other’s triumphs.
Emma Stone’s Golden Globe win for best actress was cheered to the heights by her bestie of over 15 years – pop superstar Taylor Swift. Swift, in custom Gucci and De Beers diamonds, got to her feet and whooped when Stone’s name was read out, something the actress later said was ‘wonderful’.
Her win was also greeted with pure joy by Jennifer Lawrence, who is also in the top-tier girl gang which rules Hollywood (other members include actresses Brie Larson, Blake Lively, Sophie Turner, Selena Gomez and the singer Adele).
Emma Stone with her best actress gong at the Golden Globes for her role in Poor Things
In fact, after stagily mouthing to a camera ‘If I don’t win, I’m leaving’, Lawrence celebrated Emma Stone’s triumph as if it was her own. That’s quite something given she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category.
Stone and Swift’s alliance goes back to a meeting in 2008 at the Young Hollywood Awards. ‘We just kept in touch ever since and became great friends,’ said Stone.
At the time, both were still only rising stars – Stone had starred in the high school comedy Superbad the previous year and Swift had tasted success with her first, self-titled album, but was not yet the all powerful cultural juggernaut she is today.
Their friendship deepened as both women became ever more famous and successful. For some years, they lived nearby in New York and would sometimes be glimpsed out for dinner or at nightclubs together.
It’s thought that Stone helped to play Cupid for Swift with her previous long-term boyfriend, handsome British actor Joe Alwyn who was Stone’s co-star in The Favourite – although Stone has always been too discreet and too loyal to confirm those reports.
It’s also thought that Taylor wrote the song ‘When Emma Falls In Love’ about her pal, who is now married to comedy writer Dave McCary. On stage recently, Taylor shared that the song was about ‘one of’ her ‘best friends’. (Asked about the song, Stone says that only Taylor can answer who it is about.)
As well as a shared dry sense of humour, both women prize their privacy despite living in the glare of global fame.
In 2018, Stone said: ‘I think friendship is pretty much everything. Here’s another turning-30 thing I’ve realised: You pick your family. You realise that your friendships, the people who go with you into these next phases of your life – you’re choosing your family.’ She added: ‘Loyalty is enormous.’
Ms Stone, 35, has been close friends with Taylor Swift, 34, for more than 15 years. (Pictured together at the New York premiere of Poor Things)
Last night, Stone joked of her friend’s raucous golden globes applause: ‘What an a–hole, am I right?’ She added: ‘I’ve known her for almost 20 years and I was very happy she was there.’
Stone, 35, has already conquered Hollywood, having won an Oscar in 2018 for La La Land – and this year she might just do it again (the ceremony is on March 10).
Her triumph crowns a remarkable success story which began when teenager ‘Emily’ Stone from Scottsdale, Arizona persuaded her parents she deserved a shot at fame with a Powerpoint presentation. In it, she begged her to let her drop out of school and move to Los Angeles – aged 15 – to pursue her acting dreams.
The actress won an Oscar for her performance opposite Ryan Gosling in La La Land
It has not been plain sailing. When Stone registered for the Screen Actors Guild, the American equivalent of equity, the name Emily Stone was taken. In initial TV roles, she went as Riley Stone and Emily J Stone, before deciding to go for Emma, in honour of her hero Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls.
She recalled: ‘I went up for every single show on the Disney Channel and auditioned to play the daughter on every single sitcom. I ended up getting none.’ It took her another three years to land her first big film role, opposite Jonah Hill in Superbad in 2007.
But while her film career took off, she was plagued by health problems including anxiety and asthma.
As a baby, born in November 1988 to Krista and Jeffrey Stone, she suffered badly from colic.
‘My mom dealt with a screaming baby 24 hours a day for the first six months of my life – I screamed myself hoarse every day and developed nodules as an infant,’ she said. That early trauma has led to the distinctive voice she has now. ‘I have callouses on my vocal cords, which makes me lose my voice all the time and makes doing something like screaming in a scene, over and over, really rough, because then I lose my voice for, like, a week. So I’m always trying to be pretty protective of it, but, yeah – I’ve sounded like this since I was a kid.’
She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress award in The Favourite, in which Olivia Colman won the Best Actress gong
When she was starting out as a teen actress she even had speech therapy to try and coax her gravelly growl into a higher register.
There were other challenges, too. She suffers from a hiatus hernia, which means that part of her stomach protrudes into her oesophagus. ‘I was born with it, I was like a little old man as a young lady.’
And she has been frank about the mental health issues that have dogged her from a young age – she had her first panic attack aged only seven.
‘The first time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my friend’s house, and I thought the house was burning down. I called my mom and she brought me home, and for the next three years it just would not stop.
‘I would go to the (school) nurse at lunch most days and just wring my hands. I would ask my mom to tell me exactly how the day was going to be, then ask again 30 seconds later. I just needed to know that no one was going to die and nothing was going to change.’
The attacks came every day for the next two years and she eventually saw a therapist, who diagnosed her with generalised anxiety and panic disorder, but didn’t tell her. She said in 2018: ‘I am very grateful I didn’t know I had a disorder. I wanted to be an actor and there weren’t a lot of actors who spoke about having panic attacks.’
Emma Stone won her second Golden Globe for her role in Poor Things, playing opposite Mark Ruffalo
Stone later discovered that acting and improv were another form of therapy for her anxiety.
‘With improv, I learned I could take all of these big feelings and really listen in the moment and use all of my associative brain, that still wakes me up in the middle of the night and the thing that still haunts me to this day, to be useful to my job,’ she said.
‘I also believe there is a lot of empathy when you struggled a lot internally,’ she said. ‘There is a tendency to want to understand how people around you work or what’s going on internally with them which is great for characters.’
She now regards her anxiety as a ‘superpower’ saying: ‘I believe that people who have anxiety and depression are very, very sensitive and very, very smart, because the world is hard and scary and there’s a lot that goes on, and when you’re really attuned to that, it can be crippling. And if you don’t let it cripple you and you use it for something positive and productive, it’s like a superpower.’
Perhaps her happy personal life has played a part in managing her anxiety. She met writer McCary when she hosted US sketch show Saturday Night Live in late 2016 — her third of five stints as host. He worked there as a segment editor. The romance took off over the summer of 2017 and they announced their engagement in 2019, with McCary sharing a photo of her engagement ring, a pearl set in diamonds.
Poor Things is about a young woman Bella Baxter (played by Ms Stone) who is brought back to life by a scientist
They planned to marry in March 2020 but were forced to postpone until later that year due to the pandemic. In March 2021, Stone had daughter Louise Jean, now two, saying: ‘It’s very, very exciting. I feel lucky with what lockdown has been, but it has been an insane year.’
A source told People magazine: ‘He totally supports her, and is unselfish in his desire for her success. Those are great qualities in a man for someone like Emma. She is impressed by his talent and respects him immensely. Two highly successful people in the entertainment business don’t always give the other the space they need. But he encourages her, and she loves that.’
As perfect as their union sounds, she recently admitted that she walked down the aisle with a shiner. It was not the most auspicious start, but the actress took it all in her stride: ‘The week I got married, I did open a refrigerator and the handle broke off and I got a black eye.’ She added: ‘I need a helmet and extensive therapy.’
The couple now run a production company, Fruit Tree, together. Their first project is said to be a TV adaptation of thriller The Shadows, but Stone has shown she can turn her hand to pretty much anything on her long path to stardom.
After Superbad her first leading role as a misunderstood high schooler in teen movie Easy A in 2010 was a success, followed by further acclaim for romcom Crazy Stupid Love in 2011. Her performances as Peter Parker’s classmate Gwen Stacy in the Spider-Man films (opposite then boyfriend Andrew Garfield) helped to cement her status, as did the success of 2011 film of classic novel The Help.
However there were many duds, among them a TV pilot that wasn’t picked up, a lukewarm stint on Broadway as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and two Woody Allen films, one of them criticised for its ‘whitewashed’ cast after Allen only hired white actors.
But it was as a heroin addict in 2014’s Birdman that Stone really made her mark — the challenging role earning her a first Oscar nomination. Two years later, she made good on that promise, winning a best actress Oscar for her spellbinding performance opposite Ryan Gosling in La La Land.
Established as a Hollywood heavyweight, there then came her Yorgos Lanthimos era, with Stone taking on a role in the Greek director’s hit The Favourite, alongside Olivia Colman, followed by her latest Golden-Globe-winning role as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, which she says is the role of a lifetime. A third Oscar nomination seems all but assured. To portray a woman who has had a child’s brain transplanted into her body in this Franken-fable required enormous courage – not to mention a willingness to undertake dozens of sex scenes. Co-star Mark Ruffalo calls her a once-in-a-generation talent.
She said: ‘Before I even got the chance to read the script, I felt like I understood her journey… from brand new to full adulthood. She’s my favourite character ever – anyone would be lucky to get to play Bella. It was such a long process. Prepping for it was probably four years from the beginning of talking about it to the time we actually got to film it. So I felt like I kind of lived with her for a long time. Yorgos and I still talk about how we miss her now.’
That may be, but given the Hollywood awards season has only just begun, she may be basking in the film’s glow for many months to come.