Zombieland: Double Tap star Emma Stone on overcoming anxiety and getting career advice from Diane Keaton
Oscar-winning La La Land and Spider-Man star Emma Stone reprises her role in horror-comedy sequel Zombieland: Double Tap – here she talks traumatic auditions, battling insecurity and Diane Keaton’s invaluable advice
With her distinctive raspy voice and endearing girl-next-door vibe, unlikely Emma Stone has slowly emerged as one of the decade’s most memorable screen stars – forever immortalised with a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Tinseltown musical La La Land (2016).
After making her name in romcoms Friends with Benefits and Crazy Stupid Love (both 2011), Stone made a superhero turn with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and tackled the mob movie in Gangster Squad (2013), before her stand-out role in four-time Oscar-winner Birdman (2014), alongside Michael Keaton. Stone was also hand-picked by the idiosyncratic Woody Allen for two movies, Magic in the Moonlight (2014) and Irrational Man (2015).
Now, following the relatively low-key Battles of the Sexes (2017) and The Favourite (2018), Stone is reprising one of her earliest roles with the ensemble comedy Zombieland: Double Tap, released on October 24 – almost exactly 10 years after the original Zombieland was named America’s highest-grossing zombie movie ever.
Here the star, who turns 31 on November 6, talks traumatic auditions, overcoming early insecurities and the invaluable advice of Diane Keaton.
She started young
“Even as a child I knew that I wanted to act. I couldn’t imagine any other life for me. I grew up wanting to make movies similar to those I loved watching so much.
“As a child I discovered that film was this parallel world that I could dive into. That’s how I started to watch movies all the time and wanted to be part of that world. And it’s been such an incredible joy for me to have been able to work as much as I have and fulfil that dream.
I still have a lot of doubts and insecurities that weigh on me … When I first started, nobody wanted to hire a 15-year-old actress with a deep and raspy voice
“I lived with my mother in a small apartment in La Brea Park, Los Angeles. I never went out by myself. I would always go out with my mum and we spent a lot of time going to the movies. I wasn’t going to school and I didn’t have any friends, zero social life, and I basically just studied at home and watched a lot of movies and tried to learn as much about acting as I could.