Interview: Emma Stone of 'The Amazing Spider-Man'

With her normally red hair a flaxen bright blonde -- in no small part for her work as Gwen Stacy, love interest to Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker in "The Amazing Spider-Man" -- Emma Stone still has the natural bearing, best-pal-next-door demeanor and husky, heartfelt laugh that's made her a rising star. We spoke with Stone in New York about finding the emotions under the effects, working with Garfield and getting into "hair shape" for any possible sequel ...

 

MSN Movies: When you sign on board for something like this ... I mean,  you have a great career, you make great choices, but do you quite know what a film this big is going to do for you?

 

Emma Stone: That was my first thought. The people who do my hair and makeup, we've worked together since "Superbad." I was  sitting in my room getting my hair and makeup done for the "Easy A" premiere or something like that before I was going to audition for "Spider-Man," and I was like, "What if we were sitting in this room, and there's a man with a long-lens camera, and he's going to take a picture of me, because I'm in 'Spider-Man?'" Then I was like, "Get your head out of your a**, people are not going to care that much about you." So I had to be like, "Alright, stop thinking about that. Do you want to do the movie? Is this something you're responding to?" I just had to get over myself for a second.

 

That's the great thing; all of the action and web-slinging aside, the scenes you have with Mr. Garfield have this loose natural real teen feel to them that isn't a special effect. Did you rehearse those a lot, or did you go off the cuff?

 

No, I think a lot of what happens with scenes like that is they can't be really over-rehearsed. Mark let us do a fair amount of improv, so that was nice to kind of get to improvise and find that organically sometimes.

 

Reading a script like this, there's always a moment like "Gwen dangles from a thread," and it takes place in one line of text, but doing it involves four hours of cranes and cables and teamsters. What was your big day like that?

 

I had to get thrown out a window. I was thrown out of a window, and I kind of had to do this swinging thing. I was so terrified to do it at first, and then it was the most fun ever. I just kind of wanted to keep doing it.

 

You did some looting and shooting in "Zombieland." Are you getting more comfortable with action acting?

 

Well, "Zombieland" actually required a lot more action than it did for Gwen. I was shooting a pump shotgun, and running and flipping out in "Zombieland and not so much for this. Yeah, I got to kind of rest easy this time a little bit.

 

Mr. Garfield playing Peter Parker, as a sort of venn diagram of cute & nerdy. When he puts on the hoodie is it easy to believe that he's like that kind of high school kid who never made eye contact? Is he a believable dork?

 

He's an incredible actor, so he's a kind of a believable whatever he wants to play. I think he's limitless. I think definitely I would say believable.

 

Are you someone who's going to be looking at the public reaction to the film opening weekend so they can plan "Well, I think I can bet back into that kind of hair-shape in about two years or so. ..."

 

(Laughs) Ummmm .. you mean for ...?

 

For any possible sequel?

 

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

 

And is getting in hair-shape tough for you? Getting that blonde?

 

Well, I'm blonde now, so I'm sure it wouldn't be as tough as it was then. And it wasn't that tough; you sit in a chair and people bring you magazines.

 

Is that how they do it?

 

People just do it for you; I didn't have to do it; it was pretty amazing. ....

 

('The Amazing Spider-Man" opens tomorrow ...)