Emma Stone’s 20 best performances – ranked!

20. Aloha (2015)

The biggest stumble of Emma Stone’s career was her miscasting as a pilot of Chinese and Hawaii heritage in Cameron Crowe’s half-baked romantic comedy, which triggered a whitewashing rumpus. Crowe and Stone apologised, but too late to save them from a critical mauling and box office disaster.

19. Irrational Man (2015)

In Stone’s second Woody Allen film, she plays a student who unaccountably falls for her alcoholic philosophy professor (Joaquin Phoenix) in a dismal rehash of Crimes and Misdemeanors. Parker Posey plays an older woman who also falls for the repulsive old goat in a criminal waste of two very talented women.

18. Paper Man, AKA Unlikely Hero (2009)

Man-baby Jeff Daniels, banished to Long Island to cure his writer’s block, forms an iffy May-September alliance with a gloomy pixie dream-girl in this naff indie comedy-drama. Both characters are saddled with annoying imaginary friends, but Stone’s delivery of two emotionally painful monologues is impeccable.

17. Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Stone plays an uneducated clairvoyant who can’t tell the difference between Dickens and Shakespeare in Woody Allen’s duff romcom set on the French Riviera in the 1920s. Colin Firth tries to expose her as a fraud, but falls in love instead. Stone looks adorable in flapper gear, but the 28-year age difference is pushing it.

16. The House Bunny (2008)

Dumb fun starring Anna Faris as an exiled Playboy bunny who teaches a misfit college sorority how to attract men. Stone shines as the intellectual bespectacled Natalie – the sort of character who, inevitably, looks more attractive in her “dowdy” duds before she and her housemates get stereotypical sexpot makeovers.

15. Superbad (2007)

The naturally blond actor dyed her hair red for her film debut in a crass comedy about high-school nerds aiming to get laid at an end-of-term party. Credibility is stretched to breaking point as we are asked to believe a charmless loser, played by Jonah Hill, could ever get off with a stunner like Jules (Stone).

14. The Rocker (2008)

A drummer (Rainn Wilson), fired from his rock group on the eve of their breakthrough, gets a second shot at fame 20 years later when he joins his nephew’s emo adolescent band. Stone learned bass guitar for her role as a band member, but it’s not her playing on the soundtrack.

13. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

Matthew McConaughey, pre-McConaissance, plays a womanising heel visited by three phantoms in this reworking of A Christmas Carol. Stone, decked out like 1980s Madonna with dental braces, is a hoot as Allison Vandermeersh, the ghost of a past relationship who helps show him the error of his ways.

12. The Help (2011)

Yet again, Hollywood dramatises the struggle for equal rights from a white saviour point of view, but a powerhouse cast (including Viola Davis and Oscar-winning Octavia Spencer) gives it considerable welly, with Stone sufficiently simpatico as an aspiring journalist documenting the systemic racism experienced by African American maids in 1960s Mississippi.

11. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Stone plays Gwen Stacy, the police chief’s daughter, opposite Andrew Garfield in an unnecessary reboot of the web-flinging wonderboy. It’s all a bit deja vu, but off-the-charts chemistry between the two leads (an item offscreen as well as on it) lends it emotional glue. Two years later, they were back for a heartbreaking sequel.

10. Gangster Squad (2013)

A strong cast can’t save this pale imitation of The Untouchables, set in 1940s Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles police department forms an unofficial unit to tackle mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, sucking the energy out of his every scene). Stone, as a moll attracted to Ryan Gosling’s cop, looks ultra-glam in her period frocks, and almost succeeds in making you think her one-dimensional character is interesting.

9. Zombieland (2009)

Stone and Abigail Breslin play con-artist sisters who join badass Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and nerdy Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) on the road in this post-apocalyptic action comedy. The film opts for cheap gags over subtext or social commentary, but serves up a satisfying quota of mindless zombie splatter, so we’ll give it a pass.

8. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Michael Keaton is fantastic in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s pretentious comedy-drama (shot to look like a single take) as a washed-up actor trying to mount a Raymond Carver adaptation on Broadway. Stone earned her first Oscar nomination for her knockout turn as his daughter – a recovering drug addict given to truth-telling rants – and nails the film’s tricky final shot.

7. Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

Cute multigenerational romcom in which newly separated Steve Carell takes style tips from slick pickup artist Gosling (showing his comic chops for the first time after mostly po-faced performances), who himself falls under the spell of hard-to-get Stone. It’s the first of three films she and Gosling made together.

6. La La Land (2016)

Stone and Gosling’s third pairing casts them as an aspiring actor and would-be jazz musician falling in and out of love while trying to make it in Los Angeles. Both leads sing and dance their hearts out, though the results are more like galumphing At Long Last Love than graceful Funny Face. Stone won the best actress Oscar, leading to the infamous gaffe in which Damien Chazelle’s bittersweet musical romance was erroneously announced as best picture.

5. Easy A (2010)

Stone’s breakthrough performance was in this amiable if ethically confused comic update of The Scarlet Letter, which traded on her goofy girl-next-door persona. High school student Olive Penderghast (anagram of “pretend shag”) fibs about having lost her virginity and is ostracised by her peers, but puts her shredded reputation to good use in exposing a few double standards.

4. Battle of the Sexes (2017)

In 1973, Bobby Riggs boasts he can beat tennis champ Billie Jean King in a “male chauvinist pig versus hairy-legged feminist” showdown, though the match itself isn’t as gripping as King’s campaign to promote women’s tennis, or her potentially career-ending same-sex relationship. Stone, who acquired 7kg (15lb) of muscle for the role, is an unexpectedly perfect casting as Billie Jean.

3. Cruella (2021)

The pussification of film’s great villainesses (see also: Wicked, Maleficent) continues apace with another needless origin story, but Stone gives a full-blooded, almost tragic performance as the orphan trying to make it in London’s post-punk fashion world, with Emma Thompson and the costumes of Jenny Beavan providing flamboyant backup. If only we could have a story of gloriously bitchy designing women without it needing to be attached to an established intellectual property.

2. The Favourite (2018)

Stylised shenanigans at the court of Queen Anne (Oscar-winning Olivia Colman) as Lady Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and her impoverished cousin jostle for pole position in the royal bedchamber. Yorgos Lanthimos’s historical black comedy pivots on a trio of deliciously conniving women, with Stone, as cousin Abigail, mastering an English accent and hitting her stride in a terrific, nuanced performance that slithers from nice to nasty and back again.

1. Poor Things (2023)

Alasdair Gray’s novel comes to the screen as a dirty surrealist steampunk epic, showcasing a fearless turn from Stone (who also co-produced) as Bella Baxter, a young woman with a childlike mind and no social or sexual inhibitions, who leaves her mad scientist guardian to embark on a voyage of self-discovery in the company of a debauched lawyer. Lanthimos’s most upbeat film to date is thrilling, bizarre and very funny, and Stone’s intensely physical performance is a joy to watch.