Emily Jean “Emma” Stone was born on November 6th, 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona, to Krista, a homemaker, and Jeffrey Charles Stone, a contracting company founder and CEO. Stone began acting as a child as a member of the Valley Youth Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, where she made her stage debut at 11-years-old in “The Wind in the Willows”. She appeared in 16 more Valley Youth Theatre productions until the age of 15 when she decided she wanted to make acting her career.
Stone has described herself as having been “loud” and “bossy” while growing up. She attended school at Scottsdale’s Sequoya Elementary School and Cocopah Middle School. She started being called “Emma” in elementary school because she was a huge fan of the Spice Girls Baby Spice, whose real name is Emma Bunton.
Stone attended Xavier College Preparatory as a freshman, but dropped out after one semester to become an actress. She prepared a PowerPoint presentation for her parents titled “Project Hollywood” to convince them to let her move to California to pursue an acting career. The presentation worked and in January 2004, she moved with her mother to an apartment in Los Angeles. Between auditions for roles, she enrolled in online high-school classes, and worked part-time at a dog-treat bakery. She had her TV breakthrough when she won the part of Laurie Partridge in the VH1 talent/reality show In Search of the Partridge Family (2004) which led to a number of small TV roles in the following years.
Her movie debut was as Jules in Superbad (2007) and, after a string of successful performances, her leading role as Olive in Easy A (2010) established her as a star. As of 2017, has appeared in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: The Help (2011), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and La La Land (2016); Birdman was the winner in the category. Stone is now the highest paid actress of 2017 with $26 million.
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