Emma Stone’s career in Hollywood has served as a fascinating watch thus far. Starting with 2007’s Superbad, she showed an effective on-screen presence. That helped her become a funny and well-known comedic talent. Over time, she evolved into more of a prestigious Academy Award-winning actor.
Such an evolution has made her one of the best actors working today. That includes a positive off-screen persona, making her beloved by fans and critics. Looking back on Emma’s expansive career and ranking her performances proved challenging. As a two-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner (as of now), ranking her work highlights how far Emma Stone has come as a true thespian.
Experience the best Emma Stone movies below.
1. La la Land
La La Land led Emma Stone to her first Academy Award win. Living in Los Angeles, her character Mia hopes to start an acting career. The wrong type of performer could make that character simply obnoxious. The “small-town girl with a big dream” archetype has existed in numerous films.
Stone makes that character stand out for one very distinct and exciting reason. She never plays her as someone who feels like a fantasy. Mia feels like a natural person with real ambitions, navigating the turbulent Los Angeles world. This includes a career and possibly true love in the city of dreams. Her likable presence immediately endears her to viewers, and they become enveloped in her journey of self-discovery.
2. Poor Things
In the 2023-2024 awards season, Poor Things remains at the top of numerous critics lists. Sold as a Frankenstein tale, the film follows Stone as the newly reincarnated Bella Baxter. Brought back to life (from a found cadaver) by scientist Godwin Baxter (William Dafoe), she discovers life’s joys. Watching the journey of self-discovery made for a massively compelling watch.
Viewers invest in Stone and her adventure in learning about the world. This process allows her to showcase the highs and lows of life. This includes joy, pain, love, and genuine affection for the world and its many flaws. Stone has to start as a child and morph into a full mentally developed adult by the end. That proves an incredibly rewarding, heartfelt, and substantive viewing experience, making it one of the best Emma Stone movies yet.
3. The Favourite
Emma Stone’s pairing with director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Poor Things, the upcoming Kinds of Kindness) started with The Favourite, based on a real piece of history.
This period black comedy starred Stone as Abigail Hill, who eventually earned the title Abigail Masham, Baroness Masham. Stone amply conveyed a conniving character in a world of royalty and wicked women. From the moment she appears on screen, her facial expressions show her on a mission. She exhibits incredible fierceness, balanced with a level of genuine charm.
4. Cruella
The announcement of a Cruella de Vil origin story left fans hesitant about its quality. Stone’s dynamic lead performance put those worries to rest. Her portrayal of the classic character never tried to live as a hero. Instead, Stone kept the character’s villainous roots front and center throughout.
Simultaneously, she offered the character a newfound sense of humanity. While coming from a tragic upbringing, viewers could somewhat sympathize with her past, but at the same time, that does not affect who audiences know she becomes. Stone rides an interesting balance of tones, creating a truly villainous character. Her performance makes audiences understand why she turns into a villain in the first place.
If anything, this nuanced portrayal showed the potential of Disney’s live-action remakes. The secret involves giving an actor room to play, without simply making her an anti-hero.
5. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Stone’s role in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) ran the risk of a stereotype. The character Sam served as a recovering addict, trying to reconnect with her father, Riggan (Michael Keaton), a washed-up actor.
From the first scene, Stone portrays the damage of this character. Taking on the role of her Dad’s assistant offers some turbulent family drama in the process. Viewers sympathized with her plight and cared about her outcome. The performance took a rather safe role and made it emotionally honest. It showed Stone could craft a genuine and emotional character, which earned her an Oscar nomination.
6. Easy A
Easy A helped Emma Stone break into the mainstream theatrical scene. In one of her first leading roles, Stone had to carry the high-school comedy and coming-of-age story. Her role here offered an impressive range compared to what viewers expected. S
tone’s performance took an unexpected turn, giving her “loner high schooler” character a sense of agency. The film serves as a coming-of-age story that works for one sole reason. The Olive (Emma Stone) character had equal parts sassy, engaging, and relatable heart. She remains likable and open-minded, making her easy to connect with. It showed the world that it could expect more Emma Stone movies to come.
7. Zombieland & Zombieland Double Tap
The Zombieland films helped jumpstart Emma Stone’s mainstream Hollywood career. Stone’s character Wichita (eventually revealing her name as Krista) served as a tough-as-nails zombie survivor. As written, that type of character could run the risk of a massive cliche, which does not happen here.
Stone’s portrayal in both films succeeds on two accounts. The first involves her tough, no-nonsense apocalypse survivor exterior. From her first scene in Zombieland, audiences know she can handle herself. This includes humanity throughout her typical dry-wit and consistently funny line deliveries as she gets to know Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). The role requires her to exhibit humanity and heart when the tough exterior begins to collapse. Viewers understand her actions and start to care about her genuine interests.
By Zombieland Double Tap, her performance evolves into someone who feels like a real person. This includes a focus involving her caring for her sibling Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).
8. The Curse
Showtime’s The Curse introduced Emma Stone to the uncomfortable comedy world of Nathan Fielder. The story starred Stone as Whitney Siegel, who hosts an HGTV show with her husband, Asher (Feilder). When Asher gets the couple cursed, their lives get turned upside down with shocking results.
Stone’s performance as Whitney feeds perfectly into the show’s awkward comedy styling. Unlike Asher, Whitney (Stone) looks to keep her reality TV star world from imploding. The role requires her to encapsulate two different personas. The first involves an “upbeat, positive and life-affirming” TV host. When the cameras cease, she morphs into the second persona of someone obsessively trying to keep her stardom.
Audiences remain engaged with her journey, simply eager to discover what happens next. The character never becomes fully likable, but Stone makes her arc compelling.
9. Crazy, Stupid, Love
Crazy, Stupid, Love offered Stone a chance to foray into romantic comedies. Her character, Emily, starts the film as a typical romantic comedy “Everygirl.” She does not fall for womanizer Jacob’s (Ryan Gosling) tricks, making him want her even more.
Viewers fall under that charm as well, falling in love with her. While she plays hard to get, the role has to have a simultaneous air of mystery. Stone has to make audiences want to learn more about her past, leading to the later reveal of her as Steve Carrell’s daughter.
That reveal helps make her even more of a likable character due to what becomes known about her family. She has a genuinely affectionate courtship with Gosling but keeps her family’s best interest first. Her “playing hard to get” exterior leaves room for an emotionally substantive center. Viewers understand why she remains guarded and why they should care about her outcome.
10. Superbad
Emma Stone’s first mainstream film appearance started with the 2007 teen comedy Superbad. Her character, Jules, serves as the love interest to Seth (Jonah Hill), one of the film’s protagonists. In theory, she has to exhibit the traits of the “manic pixie dream girl,” which can feel cliched with the wrong performer.
Stone’s presence took that role in an entirely different and often times surprising direction. When the film takes time to know her, she becomes more than that expectation. Jules feels genuine, real, and anything but a man’s fantasy of his “perfect girl.” The character feels like someone viewers want to have a chance to spend time with, making it more than the sum of its parts.
11. Maniac
Maniac offered Emma Stone a chance to dip into more cerebral entertainment. Her Netflix series, alongside Jonah Hill, took them on a drug trial with psychologically demented results. While starting as Annie, a character with borderline personality disorder, she evolves into something more. Once the trial begins, Stone has to play entirely different characters with entirely different motivations. Each remains more varied from the last, allowing her to craft distinct versions of the same person’s psyche.
At the same time, those individual characters help contextualize Annie’s character arc. Stone gives each of these roles a chance to shine but also provides subtext. The varying types help viewers understand why Annie has ended up with these problems. The performance evolves over time, balancing the emotional beats with fantastical ones. Such a balance delivered in this honest way becomes quite emotional as a result, making it one of her most unique performances.
12. Battle of the Sexes
In Battle of the Sexes, Emma Stone starred as the no. 1 tennis player in the world, Billie Jean King. Taking on the role of a beloved feminist icon can turn into a daunting task. Stone succeeds in encapsulating the essence of King. She makes the character incredibly likable while showcasing her vulnerabilities.
While the film received a muddled response, the performance helped honor King’s legacy. It both informed about her life while employing Emma Stone’s on-screen charisma. King’s role as a feminist gets conveyed beautifully by the performances no nonsense presence. That approach could feel like a bland history lesson in the wrong actor’s hands. Thankfully, Stone balances the emotionality of the role, making it enjoyable, interesting, and informative.
13. Magic in the Moonlight
Emma Stone’s first collaboration with Woody Allen offered a return to a quirky kind of performance. Her character, Sophie Baker, claims to have psychic powers. She has to engage audiences and make us believe in her “abilities.” The commitment to these “gifts” feels like someone who has to immediately entice viewers. She remains both mysterious and likable, which helps keep audiences guessing.
When the movie reveals that Sophie does not have abilities, Stone has to become a different kind of character. Instead of a psychic, she has to morph into a charlatan. The reveal doesn’t seem surprising but helps viewers understand her character’s motivation.
While the outcome remains easy to predict, Stone delivers compelling reasons as to why she lied in the first place. Her openness to the character’s moral and ethical dilemmas shows the journey ends up more important than the destination.
14. The Amazing Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man helped Emma Stone enter into the world of comic cinema. Gwen Stacy (Stone) introduced a beloved, underrated comic heroine. In the film, she has the intelligence which rivals Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield).
Her first portrayal had to emphasize the smarts of the character. She had to serve as a foil to Peter while balancing a flirtatious and potential relationship with him. She accurately conveys this but also remains capable in her own right. Her Gwen can hold her own in a world of superheroes and dangerous villains, making viewers care about her safety in the process.
15. Irrational Man
Irrational Man reunited Emma Stone with Woody Allen, resulting in a different type of film from Magic in the Moonlight. Her character Jill gets entranced with her professor Abe’s (Joaquin Phoenix) existential crisis. Stone has to balance a character equal parts engaging and inquisitive. She has to genuinely fall under the spell of Abe while eventually seeing cracks in his emotionally damaged facade.
Jill’s intoxication with Abe comes from an understandable place, finding someone as smart as her. When she begins to see Abe’s true mentality, audiences feel her palpable sense of fear. The character does not have much depth, but what starts as a platonic friendship morphs into something darker. The emotional range Stone gives the character helps make up for lacking depth.
16. The Rocker
The Rocker arrived after Stone’s debut performance in 2007’s Superbad. Her character, Amelia, served as a smart piece of comedic relief. The role primarily placed her as a supporting player, requiring her to have dead-eye stares with the casual comedic quip sprinkled throughout.
Even with minimal substance, Stone has several sharp line deliveries. Her character steals scenes, adding a hilarious snark to the silly comedy. It helped audiences understand that she had more than just a face viewers should remember. She also had the comedic chops to keep audiences smiling ear to ear.
17. The Gangster Squad
The Gangster Squad gave Stone a chance at a different kind of role. In the period crime-thriller, Stone had to portray a femme-fatale. In a vibrant red dress, she put a spin on the typical old-school movie starlit. The character shares the quality with those classic movie stars (I.E, Grace Kelly), making heads turn as she enters a room.
The biggest challenge calls for Stone to have a sultry chemistry with Ryan Gosling. Thankfully, that serves as an asset to the film, with Stone’s dedication to the character ringing true. Her ability to ooze her typical sarcastic charm with classic femme-fatale energy gave her a chance to play someone audiences did not expect.
18. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Gwen evolves into a more straightforward love interest. When Stone gets to convey Gwen’s smarts, the results remain bountiful. She delivers the characters’ brains throughout the film while the romantic side stays front and center. That also includes her strength in keeping up with Peter’s superhero antics.
One factor lands this performance so low. The character has to balance romanticism while also showcasing her intellect. The problem, unfortunately, resides in the romantic moments not having a strong impact. Stone easily sells Gwen’s motivations, succeeding in the more dramatic moments (like her death). The character never feels dull but simply loses the impact of her strong first impression. Even with her dedication, the character’s journey ends up much less interesting than the first film.
19. The Help
The themes and messages of 2011’s The Help have not aged well. Primarily, this involves her protagonist role as Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan.
Stone’s purpose in the story involves her existing as the embodiment of the “white savior” trope. The character has no villainous intention but does not have the depth to escape this cliche. She means to give a voice to the oppressed African-American community of the time.
Unfortunately, that rings melodramatic via the writing, succumbing to political and racial stereotypes. Stone’s performance in the film is the least problematic piece of the overall pie. She crafts an incredibly likable character who would have fit better in another story. The role’s biggest success involves the heart and sincerity she gives the character, even with the unrealistic purpose she serves in the overarching narrative.
20. Movie 43
Movie 43 has garnered the title of one of the worst films ever. Stone’s section of the film, titled “Veronica,” succeeds as one of its saving graces. The section follows exes (Stone and Keiran Culkin) who have a verbal sparring match in a grocery store. This involves their raunchy conversation unknowingly relayed via an intercom.
The genuinely funny sequence allows her to have impeccable timing. It also showcases her ability to make the most out of lackluster material. If anything, it allowed her to remind audiences of her fantastic comedic chops.