Emma Stone turns 38 today. 🎂
Born on 6 November 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona, she went from a teenager with a PowerPoint presentation to the most decorated actress of her generation.
Two Academy Awards for Best Actress. A production company of her own. And a new film, Bugonia, back in the spotlight this week.
Here is how the girl from Arizona became Hollywood’s most fearless star. ✨
Then: The Girl With a PowerPoint
Emily Jean Stone grew up in Scottsdale, the daughter of a contractor father and a homemaker mother.
She caught the acting bug early. At 11, she played Otter in a local production of The Wind in the Willows.
Over the next few years she appeared in 16 productions at Phoenix’s Valley Youth Theatre, taking vocal lessons with dreams of musical theatre.
At 15, she made her pitch. She built a PowerPoint called “Project Hollywood” to convince her parents to let her chase acting in Los Angeles.
It worked. In January 2004, she moved to LA with her mother, auditioning for every Disney show and sitcom going — and landing almost none of them.
Her TV debut came in the reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family (2004), an unsold pilot. Guest spots on Medium and Malcolm in the Middle followed.
There was a snag with her name. “Emily Stone” was already taken at the actors’ union, so she briefly went by “Riley Stone” before settling on Emma — after Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls.
Her film debut arrived in 2007 with the comedy Superbad. She dyed her hair red to play Jules, and the film became a hit.
Zombieland followed in 2009, grossing over $100 million. But the role that changed everything was still a year away.
Like Jamie Lee Curtis, who began in horror with Halloween, Stone’s early career had its own scream-queen chapter in Zombieland.
The Breakthrough: Easy A and Beyond
Easy A (2010) was Stone’s first leading role. As Olive Penderghast, a teenager caught in a rumour spiral, she carried the whole film.
The film earned $75 million on an $8 million budget, and Stone won the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. A Golden Globe nomination followed.
Hollywood noticed. She hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2010, then starred in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and the hit drama The Help (2011).
In 2012 she became Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man, returning to her natural blonde hair for the role. She played Stacy again in the 2014 sequel.
Stone refused to stay in the comedy box. In Birdman (2014), she played a recovering drug addict — and earned her first Oscar nomination.
She then took on Broadway, starring as Sally Bowles in Cabaret (2014–2015), before her career-defining role arrived.
La La Land (2016) cast her as Mia, an aspiring actress chasing dreams in Los Angeles. The film made her an Oscar winner for Best Actress.
She was 28. In 2017 she became the world’s highest-paid actress and landed on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people.
Like Joaquin Phoenix, who also spent years in the industry before his Oscar win, Stone had earned her place the long way round.
Battle of the Sexes (2017) saw her play tennis icon Billie Jean King. Then came The Favourite (2018), her first film with director Yorgos Lanthimos — and a second Oscar nomination.
Cruella followed in 2021, with Stone playing Disney’s most stylish villain. On TV, she led the dark comedies Maniac (2018) and The Curse (2023).
Now: Two Oscars and Bugonia
Poor Things (2023) was the big one. As Bella Baxter, a reanimated woman discovering the world, Stone won her second Best Actress Oscar.
She was also nominated for Best Picture as a producer — the first step toward a record no woman had set before.
In 2020 she founded the production company Fruit Tree with her husband, Dave McCary, whom she married that year. They have one child.
Bugonia (2025), her fourth film with Lanthimos, casts her as a kidnapped CEO at the centre of a conspiracy thriller. It earned her fresh Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Picture.
Those nominations made her the first woman ever nominated as both a producer and an actress in two different films.
This week, the film is back in the spotlight, arriving on streaming — and fans even dressed as her character for Halloween.
Like Winona Ryder, who found a second act decades after her 1990s peak, Stone keeps reinventing herself instead of repeating her hits.
At 38, the girl who sold her parents on Hollywood with a PowerPoint now runs her own production company — and picks the strangest, boldest scripts in the business. ✨