Emma Stone takes the lead in a movie about reputation and rumour. Her charismatic performance is causing plenty of stir itself, writes Michele Manelis
For Emma Stone, the high school sex comedy Easy A marks her graduation.
The redhead supporting player of guy-flicks like Zombieland and Superbad finally carries a movie. Yes, it might be a high school sex comedy - but it's a smart one, inspired as it is by Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel of 19th century American puritanism, The Scarlet Letter.
And that means she gets the traditional starlet graduation comparison - the "next" title.
"Emma is the new Julia Roberts," director Will Gluck declares unabashedly.
While that remains to be seen, Stone is definitely the best thing about the movie and has considerable charisma and the acting chops to secure a movie star career.
The 22-year-old is unaffected by the hype. On hearing of the director's comparisons to the iconic "pretty woman", Stone places two fingers down her throat, feigning shock and horror.
"I love Julia Roberts, don't get me wrong. I'm sorry, but that's just crazy," she laughs, shaking her head in disbelief.
In Easy, Stone carries the movie and she is in almost every scene.
"The pressure definitely outweighed the thinking of, 'Oh, what a break this will be for me.' It was all on me and I knew that if I didn't play her right, we'd be screwed. I've never had that feeling before and I was so hard on myself, to the insane point, it took so much joy out of the experience," she says. "But in retrospect, working 16-hour days at the age of 20 and having the responsibility of an adult, I learned it was the greatest gift Will could have given me. I'm so grateful that it happened, whatever the future will or won't bring."
Well, for this Arizona native, her future looks pretty rosy by anyone's standards. She's starring in Crazy, Stupid, Love alongside Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, followed by The Help, an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel.
Stone is currently re-teaming with Gluck in Friends with Benefits starring Justin Timberlake. Not too shabby.
"I knew Easy A would change everything in terms of how I approached the work but you can't sit there and know that 'this is my big break,' because it might let you down. When I did Superbad, none of us knew it was going to be as successful as it was. We were all just having fun. But now, look at Jonah (Hill) and Michael (Cera). It's pretty amazing."
Stone speaks in a throaty, sexy voice and with her pale, freckled skin and red hair, there is an obvious physical resemblance to Lindsay Lohan (whom she recently spoofed in an episode of Saturday Night Live).
"I dye my hair red. And if that's a compliment, I'll take it, she says. Pausing for a moment, she distinguishes herself (consciously or otherwise) from the troubled redhead, "My biggest goal in life is to keep my head on straight."
Easy A includes some cues from the late John Hughes movies of the 80s but comes with the sort of dialogue that makes it a sister of sorts to award-winning indie movie Juno.
Says Gluck, "We had a thing on set that when we felt we were going in that direction, I'd yell 'Juno!' We all loved that movie but we didn't want Em's character to be that confident. In high school you're not confident and that's what makes this character so great," he explains.
"She doesn't always know what she's doing, she doesn't think she knows everything, she's embarrassed that she's smart and whenever she said words that were too big she'd pull them back. We wanted to make it more realistic, which is hopefully what we did."
Gluck assembled a stellar cast with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson playing his heroine's parents, as well as Lisa Kudrow and Thomas Hayden Church in supporting roles.
In this updated version of the scandalous 17th century tale which centres on the age-old human obsession with gossip and image-destroying rumours, the internet, particularly Facebook, is the conduit for bad news travelling even faster in this of-the-moment 'text generation.'
Stone talks about her views on social networks, "I deleted my Facebook," she says, and explains the benefits of old school communication.
"It started to freak me out. It was too much for me. It was really bothering me that I didn't hear from anybody in person, anymore. I didn't like finding out what's going on in people's lives through Facebook 'Status Updates'. There was no reason to phone, people knew everything you'd done in the past few weeks and you knew everything they'd eaten. You also knew that their dog was sick - again! So, it just became more of a burden than it was a fun thing."
At this point, the burden of fame is in the not-too-distant future for Stone.
"I haven't had to deal with a lot of rumours. I've heard that I'm doing movies that I'm not doing," she laughs. "But nothing too crazy, yet."
-TimeOut
