'La La Land' Star Emma Stone Is An Oscar Favorite

She’s 28. She’s just been nominated for her first best actress Oscar. She’s probably going to win. So what could possibly be troubling the La La Land star? Start with a phobia about being lifted in the air, issues over her tennis game and — above all else — a terror of journalists.

- Benjamin Svetkey

It’s a rainy Monday afternoon, and Emma Stone is ensconced at a corner table at the restaurant inside the Sunset Tower Hotel. Her enormous green eyes survey the dining room — “Is that Paul Thomas Anderson?” she wonders about a scruffy patron at another table (it isn’t) — as she picks nervously at a hummus and veggie platter. She says she’s doing her best “not to think about the Oscars,” but who is she kidding? The nominations will be announced in less than 24 hours. Of course she’s thinking about the Oscars.

“I’m sure somebody will call me and let me know what happens in the morning,” she says. “Probably my mom — it always tends to be my mom.” Then, she quickly adds, “not that I’m expecting to get nominated. It could easily go the other way. Anything can happen.”

Stone got nominated, all right. In fact, La La Land picked up 14 nominations Jan. 24 — tying the record with Titanic and All About Eve — including best picture, best director (for Damien Chazelle) and, as everyone but Stone fully expected, best actress. Her turn as Mia, an aspiring starlet who falls for a jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling, who also got a nomination, for best actor) while singing and dancing across a contemporary Los Angeles landscape (so lovingly shot, even the gridlock looks dreamy), has the 28-year-old redhead riding shotgun on an awards-season juggernaut that started at the Venice Film Festival in August and has continued through Telluride and Toronto and the Golden Globes (where on Jan. 8, Stone, Gosling and Chazelle all won trophies) and now is hurtling toward that ultimate pot of gold known as Oscar night.