In an interview with Entertainment Weekly for her upcoming teen comedy Easy A, Emma Stone talks about what her life was like before hitting it big with movies like Superbad and Zombieland:

I used to do six auditions a week. It was brutal, but it was so important. I had mental breakdowns probably every three months. And every time I would have a bawling-on-the-floor fit, my mom would say, ‘Do you want to go home?’ And every time, no matter how upset I was, I was like, ‘No way!’ There was that perseverance in me. It’s not that I was better than the other kids. I was just obsessed.

The blog Walk A Mile In My Stilettos has some information about a photoshoot Emma did for an upcoming issue of “Entertainment Weekly” magazine!

So today I went to assist Priscilla Polley at a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly. The model of the day was the funny and beautiful actress, Emma Stone. I was more than excited to meet her, being a huge fan of her works, including Zombieland, Super Bad, and Ghost of Girlfriends Past. Not only was she as gorgeous in person, but she was quite the comic. She had me cracking up all day. And talk about down to Earth!

Anywho, (I’ll stop being star struck), the clothing we ended up putting on this girl was fantastic, including, a bright orange dress by Stella McCartney (in which she was photographed on the white couch in our lounge). This girl was so chic and uber fun. I had a blast.

The issue of Entertainment Weekly hits stands July 12th!!!!

We’ve been running this list for six years now – originally it was top ten under 25, a definition we realised was too narrow as our favourite stars got older. Funnily enough this year the youngsters are back in force – only three of our top ten, and one of the top five, are over 25.

What does that mean? Well, obviously we’re not claiming that Mia Wasikowska (ranked 3 in our chart) is as big a movie star as Natalie Portman (ranked 14). And frankly I would be surprised if Carey Mulligan (ranked 5) can command a paycheque comparable with, say, Scarlett Johansson’s (15). Rather, the list is a spot-check, a snapshot of how these talented actresses have fared over the past year or so. The fact is, while Natalie Portman has a large and enthusiastic fan-base, her recent work has been relatively disappointing, and while Scarlett did show some mettle in Iron Man 2 this season, she’s been taking some down time otherwise.

Similarly, in terms of box office numbers, Megan Fox would take some beating because of her Transformers roles – but it is debatable that those films would have performed any less impressively if, say, Emma Stone, had been cast instead. But Jennifer’s Body was box office poison, and Megan was front and centre in that marketing campaign.

To arrive at our rankings, we do look at the box office, and also at awards and critical reception – but also, less scientifically, we try to take the measure of career momentum by looking at the calibre of these actresses projects and collaborators, the kind of roles that they are playing and the buzz they are generating. So while Michelle Williams (our number 2 pick) may not be rolling in the big bucks, her high showing can be explained by the residual impact of her superb performance in Wendy And Lucy (among others); her exceptional work this year in Martin Scorsese’s hit Shutter Island; and the excitement around the Sundance drama Blue Valentine, costarring Ryan Gosling. All that, plus her recent casting as Marilyn Monroe – the very definition of hot, surely?

18. Emma Stone

Age: 21
New Entry

‘Jules’ in Superbad, Emma Stone has established her bone-fides in a string of comedies, good, bad and indifferent. There was The Rocker, The House Bunny, and Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past – and (the good), there was Zombieland, the best showcase yet for her sardonic, spunky shtick. Incidentally, word is she’s really a blonde, Judd Apatow suggested she go red for Superbad and the look stuck.

From Love Film

Looking amazing in the lingerie from the scene we watched her perform in for Easy A, Emma Stone confidently walked over to talk to us about her new racy role still rocking the sexy number.

Q: We understand you actually sing in the film.
Emma Stone: I do. I’m already kind of embarrassed enough that I have to parade around in this and dance in front of all of my peers so I was like if we could just not use my voice on playback that would be great. Just to take that concern off of hearing my voice over and over because there’s a reason I’m not recording an album.

Q: When did you first read the script and what was it about the story you really liked?
Stone: I read it almost a year ago way before Screen Gems had gotten it. I fell in love with it pretty much immediately. The way it’s written is just so wonderful and the dialogue is great. It’s very rare to find a comedy that’s really genuinely funny with a character that I would genuinely want to play and spend two months working on. The writer is just so smart and hilarious. It was very natural thing to want to do immediately I think.

Q: Is this close to “Superbad” humor wise?
Stone: I would probably say that the feel of it, this is the most like “Superbad” of any of the movies I’ve done far since “Superbad,” but it’s not comparable at all. It’s an R-rated comedy that has to do with a subject matter that is adult, but dealing with it in high school and so in that way.

Q: What was it about the character that made you want to be Olive?
Stone: When I read it – it was strange. It sounds like a horrible thing to say but I don’t mean it in any egocentric way generally, but when I read it, I was like I can’t really imagine not playing Olive and how sad I would feel if someone else were to play Olive. I fell in love with her.

Q: Did you identify with her a lot?
Stone: Her sense of humor and the way she talks. She can be relatively obnoxious as a girl as I can be much of the time. She’s a good person at heart. I liked her whole reason for doing this was just because she didn’t have anything to lose and why not go with this rumor and see what happens. It ends up not turning out very well at all, but she’s a confident chick. She’s popping out of a wheelbarrow in a Burlesque costume. I admire her strength a lot.

Q: Amanda Bynes’ character really has it out for you. Why?
Stone: She’s a very Christian girl at school who is the head of the cavalcade of crazy girls and boys that believe in purity. I am dressed like this and acting as ridiculous as I can just to shock her really. It’s kinda like the puritans against the liberals and I’m very liberal. I’m not doing any of the things that people are saying I’m doing, but I decide why not just go with it and play with this rumor and it just makes her livid.

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“The Scarlet Letter” gets a modern twist and meets John Hughes in the new Screen Gems comedy Easy A (watch the new trailer), which stars Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Cam Gigandet, Lisa Kudrow, Aly Michalka and Stanley Tucci. The September 17 release is loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel.

Director Will Gluck explained the plot to ComingSoon.net on the film’s set last summer. “You’ll see [Emma Stone is] reading ‘The Scarlet Letter’ in high school. She stitches an A on her outfit and she kinda owns the whole Scarlet Letter. There is symbolism, but it’s not exactly what Hawthorne used. Since we’re in Ojai [CA] and there’s oranges everywhere there are oranges in almost every scene. Basically when things go bad you’ll see less oranges. When things go well you’ll see more oranges.”

Stone plays a high school student named Olive who is falsely accused of sleeping around. The rumor starts when Amanda Bynes’ character, who is a religious conservativ,e learns Olive isn’t a virgin and dislikes her for not waiting until she is married to have sex. So she begins to tell lies about her to make the school hate her as well. Olive has an interesting approach to the situation and tries to turn the rumor around to her advantage. Instead of denying it, she goes along with it, but her plan backfires.

“The rumor gets spread that she’s having sex for money. It’s a false rumor. If the students pay her enough she’ll have sex. People are paying her just to say she’s had sex with them,” Gluck said. “As soon as she’s had sex, she gets put on a pedestal. So the guys go, ‘hey I want to be on the pedestal,’ so they kinda blackmail her to say she had sex with them. It all spins out of control. So there’s no sex – it’s all about talking about sex,” he continued.

While the film does follow a group of high school students and the pressures they deal with, this movie isn’t just another teen comedy. “It has big issues of sexuality and promiscuity and how you’re perceived, but then it’s not just from the kid’s point of view,” Gluck told us.

“Thomas Hayden Church and Lisa Kudrow’s character–they go through some stuff that’s even tougher than what Emma Stone is going through. Something happens in the movie that takes what Emma is going through and kinda puts in the way backburner of reality. That’s why it becomes a very adult movie very quickly,” he said.

We went to Nordhoff High School in Ojai, California which served as one of the sets for the film and watched two keys scenes in the movie being filmed.

SCENE 1

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Bonding with an imaginary friend (or two) may not be unusual for a kid, but in “Paper Man,” which opened Friday (April 23), the adults have them too.

The movie stars Emma Stone as a 17-year-old who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a middle-age novelist, played by Jeff Daniels. Both characters rely on made-up friends, including Daniels’ fictional Captain Excellent, played by Ryan Reynolds (who seems to be making a career of superhero roles lately).

When we caught up with Stone, the actress said she was too busy as a kid dealing with her own complex personality to make any friends — real or imaginary.

“I was my own imaginary friend,” Stone told MTV News. “I was a ham. I was so obnoxious. I was very bossy. I was just awful. [My turning point was] at about 8. I had my first massive panic attack. That changed things a little bit.”

Although she didn’t grow up with an invented pal, 21-year-old Stone said she could see the value in having one. “I think an imaginary friend needs to pump you up,” she explained. “Captain Excellent is a superhero, so what’s better to pump you up than a superhero?

“We all have that voice in [our] head,” she added. “But it’s really bad when your imaginary friend is bringing you down.”

From MTV

Emma Stone stars in the quirky comedy ‘Paper Man’ (which opens this weekend) as a high schooler who loves to set trash cans on fire and who befriends a failed novelist (Jeff Daniels) with an imaginary friend.

The good and sane news is that Stone shares none of those eccentric qualities. The 21-year-old actually preferred to be homeschooled, never played with fire, and acts out fantasy friends rather than imagining them.

Despite having a personality she describes as cautious, she was fearless enough to jump into the frigid waters of Montauk in the middle of November for a scene in the film. But Stone’s ultimate risk was seven years ago, when she presented her parents with a Power Point pitch to move to Hollywood.

Is it true you created a Power Point presentation for your parents to let you move to Los Angeles?
I put it together when I was 14 to convince my parents to let me move to L.A. It had worked out well because a couple of years before I had tried to convince my parents to homeschool me and I did a presentation with really old school boards. And so a couple of years later when Power Point came around I did it with that. It’s easy to do; you just drag clip art. The gist of it was, “just please let me move to L.A. to be an actress.” I had ‘Hollywood,’ a classic at the time by Madonna, as the soundtrack. There was no metaphor there; it was very literal. I really was a forward thinker.

In ‘Paper Man’ your character is a pyromaniac setting fire to crash cans. Have you ever done that in real life?
No, I did not. I was a pretty cautious kid. I still am cautious about stuff so no pyromania for me. Those scenes setting fire to the trash can are always so set up because they need to keep everything safe so it wasn’t too scary.

Your co-star Jeff Daniels’ character has an imaginary superhero friend, Captain Excellent. Did you have imaginary friends growing up?
I didn’t have any imaginary friends but I was very hammy and theatrical. I was always kind of outgoing and playing characters but I never really created one outside myself. Maybe I always wanted one so I became an actor. I was my own imaginary friend! I was cloning myself.

Hunter Parrish plays your boyfriend in ‘Paper Man.’ Were you a ‘Weeds’ fan?
I’ve seen a couple of episodes but not enough to call myself a ‘Weeds’ head, or a pothead for that matter! He’s so great. He’s like the sweetest guy in the world.

What was it like shooting the film in Montauk?
We were in Montauk in the middle of November and I had to jump into the ocean about six times when it was 30 degrees outside. It was pretty cold, freezing, but it was such a beautiful place. I’d never been to Montauk before and still haven’t been there in the summer but it was very lonely and isolating which was the tone of the movie so it was kind of perfect. I would love to come back in the summer and learn to surf but again caution and coordination are just an issue. I mean surfing, I would knock myself out in two seconds, guaranteed!

Are you a fearless person would you say?
I was terrified to clock Jeff Daniels with a book (in the scene where he makes a drunken pass at my character) because I’m cautious and not very coordinated; two great things that go hand in hand. They put some foam inside the book and I had to bang him with it but I’m sure I kept hurting him.

You’ve got two projects in the works; what are they?
The next one is currently called ‘Untitled Marital Crisis Comedy’ and I’m hoping we keep that name because I love it. That’s with Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling. I play Ryan’s love interest so not a bad day at the office. Then I’m doing ‘Help.’ I play a writer in Jackson, Miss., in 1962, who just graduated from Old Miss and she writes a book, kind of an expose, about the maids in town that are working for her friend. It’s a wonderful script. (The character) Skeeter does not have to clean so I won’t be cleaning any houses! She doesn’t really know what she’s doing when it comes to that. She’s like me in that sense.

From Moviefone