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Thursday
21Aug2008

The Big Picture Interview with Emma Stone

DateThursday, August 21, 2008 at 3:31PM
She grew up just down the road from The Big Picture here in Phoenix, and now Emma Stone has two movies in theaters this weekend, with The House Bunny and The Rocker with Rainn Wilson. She's just 19, but Stone has already carved out a little niche for herself with her new flicks and her turn last summer in Superbad. Stone recently returned home for a couple of days, where we had a chance to catch up with her and talk shop.

Is Amelia in The Rocker a lot like Emma?

No, and that's what I liked about it. She felt different than me. She's not a smiler and she looks at the dark side of things more often than the light side of things. I'm a little more silver lining in my life. That's what drew me to her, especially in a comedy, finding a character like that that is so sardonic and so completely stiff-faced, and the challenge of not smiling and not cracking jokes.

Speaking of cracking jokes, Jason Sudeikis has some of the most memorable dialogue in The Rocker. Did he just come in and improv all of that or was his character of the douchebag record executive already written? And did everybody else get to improv, too?

The majority of Jason's stuff was improv. He definitely went...the distance with his improv. There were hysterical things that were not in the movie.

But I've been lucky to have more free reign in movies, like House Bunny and Superbad. This one we knocked out pretty quick, so there were two lines I wrote in this movie, but that was the extent of my free reign.

You learned bass for the movie and you guys rehearsed as a band, right?

Yeah, we did, to get that feel. We had to have that camaraderie as a band and "get each other" enough, so for about two weeks before we started shooting, we rehearsed everyday in a big empty warehouse in Toronto.

You're only 19, but you've become a working actress, popping up in a couple of summer movies this year, Superbad last year. What was that like for a teenager who was not a prefabricated star at that age?

There was a lot of rejection for many years. I convinced my parents to let me move out there when I was 15, so you can imagine what it was like to not be working when I should've been in high school, and I was auditioning and auditioning. I'm incredibly grateful at this point that this much has happened. And I don't have a job lined up next. That's the life of an actor: Who knows if I'll ever work again? That comes with the territory, I guess.

I've been kind of lucky. I've never had the mentality of "I have to do this" just because I need the money. It's always, "I need to find aspects of this that I love to be able to do it." However, the next script that I do, I absolutely have to love it or I will go crazy.

I'm going to hold out as long as I absolutely have to. And it probably won't be a broad studio comedy. I'm kind of excited to veer into...you know, the more human and relatable, the better. My favorite movies are Cameron Crowe movies or Harold & Maude, and I love that stuff with a passion. So, the next thing that comes a long that makes me feel the way those movies make me feel, that's what I'd love to do.

How did you convince your parents to move out to L.A. at the tender age of 15?

A Power Point presentation.

Really? Power Point? Do you still have it?

Yeah. It was on a virus-raided computer. It's been extracted by my dad's IT guy at his company. He extracted the files, so I have a loose outline of what it was. All the text is still in there.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

The fact that she's seen and liked Harold & Maude at the age of 19 makes me a fan.

Thursday, August 21, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterChristian

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