It's her talent that is winning her legions of fans and admirers, but Emma Stone's movie choices, whether intended or just as a function of her artistic interests, aren't hurting her popularity, either.
Though her career, at 22, has been a relatively short one, Stone has cultivated two of the most loyal fan bases in show business: the gay community and fanboys. For the former, it was her role in "Easy A," a high school comedy that dealt with, in no minor terms, the bullying of gay teens, that won her admiration, something she openly embraces.
"['Easy A'] writer, Bert V. Royal, is gay, and these were issues that he had actually experienced growing up, so we knew that would resonate," she says in the new issue of The Advocate. "But when the movie came out last summer, media coverage of gay teen suicides was everywhere. Because the movie came out right in the eye of that storm, the timing ended up being more relevant and poignant than we anticipated."
For Stone, it was a personal pleasure to address the issue, thanks to her background.
"I did a lot of theater growing up, and I was lucky to be raised in a family that was very accepting, so someone being gay was never odd or off-putting to me," she says. "I have a lot of wonderful gay friends, but one of the most formative men in my life is Max, who's been my best friend since I was 11 years old."
As for the fanboys, it started out with her starring turn in Zombieland, but the real juice will come when she features as Peter Parker's long-lost girlfriend Gwen Stacy in the franchise reboot, "The Amazing Spider-Man," alongside Andrew Garfield.
"If that happens, it'll be the biggest compliment ever. Just because the scale is so large, doing Spider-Man is more daunting than I realized in the beginning," Stone admits. "I've tried not to think about it too much -- especially while we were shooting -- but when you're sitting on these giant blue screens with all these rigs, it's the opposite of an environment like Superbad. It's odd, but it's very exciting. Like with 'The Help' but more insane, Spider-Man has this built-in fan base, where people already know the story and are going in with their own opinions and expectations, so you're either going to live up to them or let people down. But it's really all about passion, and I love passionate people."
Stone nearly got into fanboy hearts a few years back, when she nearly nabbed the lead role in the NBC show "Heroes," which eventually went to Hayden Panettiere. Losing that role, she recently told Vanity Fair, was her rock bottom.
"I could hear that, in the other room, a girl had just gone in and they were saying, 'You are our pick ... On a scale of 1 to 10 you're an 11,'" she said. "I went home and just had this meltdown."
Now, she's one of the most in demand stars in Hollywood -- "The Help," as she mentioned, is a highly anticipated new book-to-film adaptation of Kathryn Sockett's civil rights novel -- and she'll also star as Ryan Gosling's lady target in "Crazy, Stupid, Love" in perhaps the summer's most exciting romantic comedy.
But while Gosling is nice, she's got someone else on her mind.
"Christina Hendricks. It's a no-brainer," she answers when asked about a girl crush. "Everything about her does it for me. That's my kind of woman."
For so many fan bases, it's Stone that does it for them.
For more, click over to The Advocate.