If the trend continues, Poor Things (Poor creatures) could earn Emma Stone a second Oscar for best actress. It would only be fair, because if the 2023 vintage was rich in excellent performances, Stone’s simply has no equivalent. The star of La La Land (For the love of Hollywood) plays Bella Baxter, a young woman recently brought back from the dead by a deformed scientist. However, in this completely crazy story of emancipation, the intrepid Bella is not the bride of Frankenstein, but rather the bride of herself. During a virtual conference, Emma Stone talks about this radical role: the ideal opportunity to look back on the star’s atypical career.
Winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, Poor Things is one of the most attention-grabbing films of 2023. Emma Stone’s bold, captivating and generous composition is no stranger to this.
“My preparation largely boiled down to getting rid of any notion of shame and judgment as much as possible,” explains the actress during the videoconference event at which The duty was invited.
“It was more of a process of removing than adding: I had to let things go. Deep down, Bella is pure curiosity and pure joy. She feels no shame, she has no trauma and expresses herself without the slightest filter. She doesn’t even have any reflexes that could be described as Pavlovian. That was the immense joy of playing her: the fact that she lives in a place of complete discovery. »
And in this “place of complete discovery”, Emma Stone puts herself in danger as few actresses of her stature would dare to do. With hindsight, we see, however, that there was the germ of this from his first films.
Out of the box
Cast in a supporting role in the 2007 hit Superbad (Super patients), about the escapades of adolescents, Emma Stone immediately stood out thanks to her irreverent humor, her deep voice contrasting with her small stature, her flamboyant red hair… In 2010, Easy A (Anything for an A), another teenage comedy, imposed him in a leading role.
Sympathetic but agreed, the subsequent Crazy Stupid Love (A crazy love) And The Amazing Spider-Man (The Extraordinary Spider-Man) and its sequel were the kind of choices imposed on any rising Hollywood star (romantic comedy, superhero film).
Like Bella Baxter, however, Emma Stone quickly decided to free herself from her shackles. This, by playing an ex-drug addict in the iconoclast Birdman, by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Her look, at the end, captured the imagination: first Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.
In 2016, La La Land, by Damien Chazelle, where Stone shone as an aspiring actress, proved to be a milestone, with an Oscar for best actress up for grabs. In 2018, in The Favorite), by Yorgos Lanthimos, she wowed as a pushy confidante of Queen Anne, landing another Oscar nomination in the supporting category. But precisely, after her Oscar for best actress, some would have expected that she would opt for a leading role in a big and lucrative Hollywood production, which the extravagant The Favorite was not at all.
It was a wise decision.
Indeed, it resulted in one of those career-changing encounters. The formal and narrative boldness of Yorgos Lanthimos revealed itself in tune with the taste for risk manifested very early by Emma Stone. To entrust the latter:
“I know that I can have absolute trust in Yorgos, that I can give myself up completely and that he will protect me: it is very rare, for an actress or an actor, to feel this kind of certainty. »
A unique character
As it happens, Poor Things is their third collaboration. Even after filming, they met in secret for a fourth project: Kind of Kindnesswhich will be released in 2024.
Waiting for, Poor Things and its heroine will continue to be talked about.
Moreover, Bella not resembling any other character, Emma Stone could not rely on any model whatsoever. Certainly, Yorgos Lanthimos suggested the film to him It’s all about this and what you’re looking for (The enigma of Kaspar Hauser), by Werner Herzog, but insisting on the fact that the famous mystery man of Nuremberg remained a character very far from Bella.
“The idea was not to imitate,” opines the actress, who specifies that she worked a lot on the physical aspect of her performance.
Bella’s movements as well as her language are elements that Yorgos and I thought a lot about, because it is through this that we mark Bella’s evolution as the story progresses.
“Bella’s movements as well as her language are elements that Yorgos and I thought a lot about, because that’s a lot of how we mark Bella’s evolution as the story progresses. »
A wonderful anomaly
You should also know that Emma Stone is one of the producers of the film.
“It’s a nice feeling to have an additional piece of this character and his story,” she notes.
For the record, Emma Stone’s investment in the role is commensurate with her letting go of her image as a Hollywood star, that is to say total. The only comparable case would perhaps be, in a very different register, Isabelle Adjani, at the time of Possessionby Andrzej Zulawski.
And again: Stone evolves in Hollywood, which remains a fairly conservative dream factory, while Adjani made his reputation in the bosom of a more adventurous European cinema.
In short, Emma Stone is a wonderful anomaly, a splendid exception within the major American studios. She is even more so because in conferences, she has none of the cliché of the tortured actress, quite the contrary.
“When I hear an actor say how hard it is as a job, I find it embarrassing… I mean: seriously! ? Yes, it’s work, and it’s often physically and emotionally exhausting… But to say that it’s hard… I don’t understand. It’s so rewarding. Playing is a real pleasure. »
Or “pure joy,” like Bella.
The film Poor Things hits theaters on December 15.