Emma Stone

Emily Jean Stone was born on November 6, 1988, in Scottsdale, Arizona, to Krista Jean Stone (née Yeager), a homemaker, and Jeffrey Charles Stone, the founder and CEO of a general-contracting company. Stone lived on the grounds of the Camelback Inn resort from the age of 12 to 15. She has a younger brother, Spencer. Her paternal grandfather, Conrad Ostberg Sten, was from a Swedish family that anglicized their surname to "Stone" when they immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island. She also has German, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.

Stone reprised her role of Wichita in Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), which received mixed reviews and grossed $122 million worldwide. She also narrated the documentary web television series The Mind, Explained. Stone will next star in Cruella, a live-action spin-off of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, in which she will portray Cruella de Vil (originally played by Glenn Close in the 1996 adaptation). She is also set to return as the voice of Eep in the sequel to The Croods and to star in the drama Love May Fail, based on Matthew Quick's 2015 novel.

Stone attended Xavier College Preparatory‍—‌an all-girl Catholic high school‍—‌as a freshman, but dropped out after one semester to become an actress. She prepared a PowerPoint presentation for her parents titled "Project Hollywood" (featuring Madonna's 2003 song "Hollywood") to convince them to let her move to California to pursue an acting career. In January 2004, she moved with her mother to an apartment in Los Angeles. She recalls: "I went up for every single show on the Disney Channel and auditioned to play the daughter on every single sitcom", adding, "I ended up getting none." Between auditions for roles, she enrolled in online high-school classes, and worked part-time at a dog-treat bakery.

She made her television debut as Laurie Partridge on the VH1 talent competition reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family (2004). The resulting show, retitled The New Partridge Family (2004), remained an unsold pilot. She followed this with a guest appearance in Louis C.K.'s HBO series Lucky Louie. She auditioned to star as Claire Bennet in the NBC science fiction drama Heroes (2007) but was unsuccessful and later called this her "rock bottom" experience. In April 2007, she played Violet Trimble in the Fox action drama Drive, but the show was canceled after seven episodes.

According to Stone, she suffers from asthma, which she discovered after having difficulty breathing while filming Easy A. Her mother was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and was cured in 2008. Stone and her mother celebrated by getting tattoos of birds' feet, designed by Paul McCartney, a reference to the Beatles' "Blackbird", which is a song she and her mother love. She appeared in a Revlon campaign that promoted breast cancer awareness. In 2011, Stone featured in a collaborative video between Star Wars and Stand Up to Cancer, which aimed to raise funds for cancer research. Two years later, she attended an event by Gilda's Club, an organization working for a similar purpose. From 2012 to 2014, she hosted the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Revlon Run/Walk, which helps fight women's cancer.

As her career in Hollywood films has developed, Stone has become a successful and popular actress. In 2008, she topped Saturday Night Magazine's Top 20 Rising Stars Under 30 and was included in a similar list compiled by Moviefone. LoveFilm placed her on their list of 2010 Top 20 Actresses Under 30, and her performance in Easy A was included in Time's Top 10 Everything of 2010. She appeared in the 2013 Celebrity 100, a compilation of the 100 most powerful people in the world, as selected annually by Forbes. The magazine reported that she had earned $16 million from June 2012 to June 2013. That same year, she was ranked first in the magazine's Top 10 Best Value Stars. In 2015, Forbes published that she had become one of the world's highest-paid actresses with earnings of $6.5 million. The magazine would rank her as the world's highest-paid actress two years later with annual earnings of $26 million. In 2017, she was featured by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Stone appeared in three films released in 2009. The first of these was opposite Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas in Mark Waters' Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Loosely based on Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, the romantic comedy has her playing a ghost who haunts her former boyfriend. Critical reaction to the film was negative, though it was a modest commercial success. Her most financially profitable venture that year was Ruben Fleischer's $102.3 million-grossing horror comedy film Zombieland, in which she features alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin. In the film, she appeared as a con artist and survivor of a zombie apocalypse, in a role which Empire's Chris Hewitt found to be "somewhat underwritten." In a more positive review, The Daily Telegraph's critic wrote, "[T]he hugely promising Stone ... [is] a tough cookie who projects the aura of being wiser than her years." Stone's third release in 2009 was Kieran and Michelle Mulroney's Paper Man, a comedy-drama which disappointed critics.

Disillusioned at being typecast as the "sarcastic interest of the guy", Stone co-starred with Viola Davis in Tate Taylor's period drama The Help (2011), a film she found challenging. The film is based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name and is set in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. She met with Taylor to express a desire to work in the film. Taylor has said: "Emma was completely awkward and dorky, with her raspy voice, and she sat down and we got a little intoxicated and had a blast, and I just thought, 'God! God! This is Skeeter." She was cast as Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, an aspiring writer learning about the lives of the African-American maids. In preparation for the part, she learned to speak in a Southern accent; she also educated herself on the Civil Rights Movement through literature and film. With a worldwide gross of $216 million against a budget of $25 million, The Help became Stone's highest-grossing film to that point. The film, and her performance, received positive reviews from critics. Writing for Empire, Anna Smith thought that Stone was "well-meaning and hugely likable" despite finding flaws in the character. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and won Best Ensemble Cast from the Women Film Critics Circle and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

Stone moved from Los Angeles to Greenwich Village, New York, in 2009. In 2016, she moved back to Los Angeles. Despite significant media coverage, she has refused to speak about her private life. Concerned with living a "normal" life, Stone has said that she finds little value in media attention. She has expressed her fondness for her profession, and has cited Diane Keaton as an acting influence, calling her "one of the most covered-up actresses of all time". She has also named Marion Cotillard as one of her inspirations.

Stone has been described as a style icon‍—‌the media cites her hair, eyes, and husky voice as her trademarks. Vogue credits the actress for her "sophisticated, perfectly put-together looks", writing that "her charisma, both on-screen and off-, has charmed many." In 2009, she featured in AskMen's Top 99 Women, FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World, and Maxim magazine's Hot 100; the latter also placed her on the list on three other occasions‍—‌2010, 2011, and 2014. She continued to be featured in AskMen's annual beauty lists from 2010 to 2015, ranking among the top forty each year. In 2011, she appeared in Victoria's Secret's list of What is Sexy? as the Sexiest Actress. She was mentioned in several other media outlet lists that year, including People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful Women, each of FHM's and FHM Australia's 100 Sexiest Women in the World, and Men's Health magazine's 100 Hottest Women. She ranked sixth on Empire's list of the 100 Sexiest Movie Stars in 2013. Stone was named the best dressed woman of 2012 by Vogue magazine and was featured in similar listings by Glamour in 2013 and 2015, and People in 2014. In 2017, Buzznet named her one of the world's most beautiful women.

In October 2010, Stone hosted an episode of NBC's late-night sketch comedy Saturday Night Live; her appearances included a sketch playing off her resemblance to Lindsay Lohan. Stone described it as "the greatest week of my life". She hosted it again in 2011, appeared in an episode in 2014, and in its 40th anniversary special in 2015. A brief appearance in the sex comedy Friends with Benefits (2011) reunited her with Gluck. She followed this with a supporting role in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) alongside Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore. The film features her as a law school graduate, and the love interest of Gosling's character. Despite finding "some inevitable collapses into convention" in the film, Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote that Stone "ties the whole film together". At the 2012 Teen Choice Awards, she won the Choice Movie Actress – Comedy award for her performance in the film. Crazy, Stupid, Love was a box office success, grossing $142.9 million worldwide with a production budget of $50 million.

Stone has a close relationship with her family. She says: "I am blessed with a great family and great people around me that would be able to kick me in the shins if I ever for one minute got lost up in the clouds. I've been really lucky in that sense." During the production of The Amazing Spider-Man in 2010, Stone dated co-star Andrew Garfield. Their relationship was reported in the media, with various speculations. The couple refused to talk about it publicly, though they made several appearances together. In 2014, on an occasion in New York, Stone and Garfield encouraged paparazzi to visit websites that spread awareness of causes such as autism. In 2015, they were reported to have broken up. Since 2017, Stone has been in a relationship with Saturday Night Live segment director Dave McCary. They became engaged in December 2019 and married the following year.

Stone began 2013 with a voice role in the DreamWorks Animation film The Croods, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This followed with an appearance in Movie 43, an anthology film which consists of sixteen short stories—she played the title role in the segment entitled "Veronica". The actress collaborated with Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn in Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad (2013), a crime thriller set in Los Angeles during the 1940s. The New York Times' A. O. Scott dismissed the film as "a hectic jumble of fedoras and zoot suits", but praised her pairing with Gosling. Stone expressed a desire to work with Gosling on more projects.

In 2014, Stone reprised the role of Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In an interview with Total Film, the actress explained that her character was not dependent on the film's protagonist. "She saves him more than he saves her. She's incredibly helpful to Spider-Man ... He's the muscle, she's the brains." Her performance was well received by critics; an Empire reviewer praised her for standing out in the film: "Stone is the Heath Ledger of this series, doing something unexpected with an easily dismissed supporting character." The role earned her the Favorite Movie Actress award at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. Later that year, Stone took on a role in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Magic in the Moonlight, a modest commercial success. A. O. Scott criticized her role, and pairing with Colin Firth, describing it as "the kind of pedantic nonsense that is meant to signify superior intellect".

From November 2014 to February 2015, Stone starred in a revival of the Broadway musical Cabaret as Sally Bowles, taking over the role from Michelle Williams. Considering it to be "the most nerve-racking thing ever", Stone told the Entertainment Weekly magazine that she listened to a French radio station to mentally prepare herself for the role. Variety's Marilyn Stasio was critical of her singing abilities and found her performance "a bit narrow as an emotional platform, but a smart choice for her acting skills, the perfect fit for her sharp intelligence and kinetic energy." Both of Stone's 2015 films‍—‌the romantic comedy-drama Aloha, and the mystery drama Irrational Man‍—‌were critical and commercial failures, and her roles were panned by critics. In Cameron Crowe's Aloha, she played the role of an air force pilot alongside Bradley Cooper, and in the Woody Allen-directed Irrational Man, she played the love interest of Joaquin Phoenix's character, a philosophy professor. The former was controversial for whitewashing the cast, as Stone's character was meant to be of Asian, Hawaiian, and Swedish descent; Stone later regretted the project, acknowledging whitewashing as a prevalent problem in Hollywood. Despite the criticism, she was nominated for Choice Movie Actress – Comedy at the 2015 Teen Choice Awards. Stone also appeared in the music video for Win Butler's single "Anna".

Stone, alongside three other celebrities, was present at the 2012 Nickelodeon HALO Awards, a television special that profiled five teenagers who are "Helping And Leading Others" (HALO). She attended the 2014 Earth Hour, a worldwide movement for the planet organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature. In 2015, she was part of a fundraising event in support of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which helps people in the television and film industry with limited or no resources. In 2018, she collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up movement to protect women from harassment and discrimination.

In 2018, Stone and Rachel Weisz starred as Abigail Masham and Sarah Churchill, two cousins fighting for the affection of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), in Yorgos Lanthimos' historical comedy-drama The Favourite. Stone found it challenging being an American among a British cast, and had difficulty in mastering her character's accent. The film premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival to critical acclaim. Michael Nordine of IndieWire praised Stone for taking on such a bold role following the success of La La Land, and termed the three lead actresses "a majestic triumvirate in a period piece that's as tragic as it is hilarious." For The Favourite, Stone received her fifth Golden Globe nomination and third Oscar nomination. That September, she starred in and served as an executive producer for the Netflix dark comedy miniseries Maniac, co-starring Jonah Hill and directed by Cary Fukunaga. Stone and Hill played two strangers, Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim, whose lives are transformed due to a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. An admirer of Fukunaga's work, Stone agreed to the project without reading the script. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian praised Stone and Hill for playing against type and for delivering career-best performances; Judy Berman of Time magazine was similarly impressed with their growth as actors since Superbad and noted the complexity in their performances. In the same year, Stone appeared alongside Paul McCartney in a music video for his song "Who Cares".