Actress Emma Stone on Baftas hit La La Land, the Oscars buzz and how snogging Ryan Gosling ‘is a great job’ – but dancing is harder
STILL reeling from winning a Golden Globe, Emma Stone reckons she deserves another gong – for making it through La La Land with all her toes intact.
The 28-year-old American scooped Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her enthralling turn in the modern-day musical, with the odds on her picking up an Oscar next month.
But Emma reckons her biggest achievement so far is surviving La La Land’s gruelling dance routines in one piece.
From the sound of it, she and co-star Ryan Gosling took chunks out of one another during rehearsals.
In an exclusive chat, Emma reveals: “Kissing Ryan Gosling is part of my job — dancing with Ryan Gosling was the harder part of my job.
“We were always insisting to our dance teachers that we were ready to dance together, then we would and everyone would be like, ‘Um . . . ’ So we’d have to start again.
“It’s a relief we made it out with all our toes.
“Singing and dancing is hard, it’s hard to be Beyonce. Beyonce is Beyonce for a reason.”
La La Land, which hit cinemas on Friday, is already being hailed as a modern classic.
Made on a modest budget, it has been a blockbuster smash in the US.
It swept the board at the Golden Globes last Sunday, winning seven awards, and has 11 nominations for the upcoming EE Baftas.
It is the story of aspiring actress Mia (Emma), and jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan) as they meet and fall in love in Los Angeles.
It has been compared to 1952 classic Singin’ In The Rain — but the smiley ending of so many golden age musicals is not guaranteed with this romance.
Emma, who has had an on/off relationship with her The Amazing Spider-Man co-star Andrew Garfield, 33, thinks this makes the film’s romance far more believable.
She says: “There is no happily ever after, there isn’t always the kiss at the end and it’s not always perfect.
“That’s heartbreaking, but the most heartbreaking things in life are the truest.
“I do love a bittersweet story and I don’t find it sad, necessarily.
“I find it bittersweet, it’s realistic in a way that it doesn’t all come true, for anyone, ever.
It’s not exactly how you pictured it like, ‘Oh my God. My life’s so perfect’.
“That’s why it makes me so crazy to look at social media, when you see people like, ‘It’s just the best life ever. I couldn’t be happier’. You’re like, ‘Shut up, that is not true’.
“Not everything comes together in the best way ever every day. Happily ever after . . . that’s not the reality of life, but you can be happy in a different way than maybe you originally hoped or expected. I love that.”
Her ex Andrew gave Emma a standing ovation when she received her Golden Globe. He recently told how there was still “so much love between us and so much respect”.
Emma has said that 2015 — the year they broke up — had been “sad”, adding of Andrew: “He’s someone I still love very much.” She has not been romantically linked with anyone since they split.
Despite her heartbreak both on and off the big screen, she does not believe having a Hollywood career will mean sacrificing her chance of meeting The One.
Emma says: I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive, career or love.
“Meryl Streep seems very in love with her husband. That’s a very great family and she’s the best there is. "So people can find a way to do both, it’s just about prioritising.”
Another aspect of making La La Land that felt familiar was filming the painful audition scenes.
Director Damien Chazelle — who shot to fame with the adrenaline-fuelled drummer movie Whiplash in 2014 — encouraged his leading stars to share their stories of being a jobbing actor.
It brought back many memories for Emma, who moved to Hollywood aged 15 and spent the first three years being rejected “by every Disney movie and sitcom daughter role there was”.
She had a job cooking in a dog bakery (yes, really), but was desperate for acting to conquer the anxiety she has had since a child.
She said recently: “My brain was naturally zooming 30 steps ahead to the worst-case scenario. My anxiety was constant. Acting really helps with that as I have to be present.”
Her big break finally came in 2007 movie Superbad, where she had a supporting role as love interest to Jonah Hill. Looking back on all her failed auditions made her realise just how far she has come.
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Emma says: “Three years of auditioning and nothing was tough.
“But I now have the benefit of hindsight and a lot of gratitude for the things I didn’t get, and the way those things all led to me being here.
"So in a way it was nice to revisit those times and remember what changed and how something that feels like a disaster in the moment ultimately creates this bigger picture that makes you who you are.
“I’ve done some jobs I wasn’t crazy about.
“We brainstormed with Damien about the auditions in the movie.
“An audition at the beginning was Ryan’s story. He had been in one when he was a teenager and was crying in the middle of some scene.
"The casting director answered the phone and was talking to someone in the middle of him crying. She hung up and was like, ‘Continue’.”
La La Land is the third time she has been cast alongside Ryan. They have previously smouldered on screen in 2011’s Crazy Stupid Love and 2013’s Gangster Squad.
There is no happily ever after. It's heartbreaking.
La La Land is not even the first time they have danced together.
In Crazy Stupid Love they recreated the iconic Dirty Dancing lift. It looked picture perfect in the movie but was far from smooth in real life.
Ryan revealed they had to use a body double for the wide shot of the move after Emma had a “meltdown”.
The pair clarified his remark when they appeared on The Graham Norton Show on Friday.
Emma admitted: “The Dirty Dancing lift didn’t go to plan.
“When we did the film I knew Ryan was going to lift me but what I didn’t know was that I had an internalised phobia about being lifted six feet in the air and it all went horribly wrong.
“I went into full meltdown, I had to lie down and watch Labyrinth while crying!”
Ryan, 36, added: “I’ve never had this experience but I can only imagine if a possum fell out of a tree, landed on my head and tried to scratch my eyes out, it would be something similar.”
She might already have a Golden Globe under her belt for La La Land but Emma refuses to have her head turned by all the industry talk that she is in line to add an Oscar statuette.
She says: “Stop talking about the buzz!
“Depending on what emotional state I’m in sometimes I’m like, ‘All right kid, you did the best job you could’, then at other times I’m like, ‘You are literally the worst actor that ever lived. How is anyone ever going to think anything other than that?!’
“I used to be really like a mean mum to myself. I used to be really hard on myself in a cruel way — and now the cruelty has gone.”
Review by Len Goodman
A La Land is wowing critics and audiences alike, including Len, who thinks it’s the best musical since Grease.
He says: “That first dance routine in particular is a real blockbuster. Dozens of drivers jump out of their cars and join in a six-minute choreographed extravaganza.
“It really makes you sit up. I’d go so far as to say that it’s the first scene to capture the vibe of the classic MGM musicals since Grease in 1978.
“Like La La Land, that was a film that simply made you feel happy. Of course, there are some cynics who will never like musicals.
“For them – and I include my wife – the moment an actor bursts into song is too unrealistic. But these cynics are looking at musicals in the wrong way and I feel sorry for them.”
Len, speaking to The Telegraph this week, added: “La La Land also benefits from terrific performances from Gosling and Stone, especially when you consider they’re not professional dancers.
They have a naturalness to their moves that reminded me of Ore Oduba, the BBC sports presenter who won last year’s Strictly.
“Their chemistry is great. They could be the closest thing we have to a golden Hollywood couple at the moment.”
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