Emma Stone covers the May issue of Marie Claire Australia to promote her role in The Croods, which features her voicework as a teenage Neanderthal who falls in love with a slightly more evolved humanoid voiced by Ryan Reynolds. It’s a pretty cute movie for very young kids, and voicework is where it’s at these days. Emma looks quite beautiful on this cover even if the styling is a bit bland, but one doesn’t expect dramatic fireworks from Marie Claire. I think Emma’s got the most gorgeous face, she has followed the typical Hollywood starlet routine of losing a fairly drastic amount of weight over the past few years. I suppose almost anyone would cave to the pressure, but I wanted something different for Emma. In this interview, Emma talks about how she doesn’t cave to pressure, which I guess is open to interpretation. Here are some excerpts:

On the pressure of Hollywood: “For a long time, I didn’t get worried about being boxed in. And then I started thinking about it too much, and then it scared me. And now I’m just trying to let go of it, and realize that whatever my path is going to be, it’s going to be. I’m not going to try to control what people think of me.”

On moving from Los Angeles to New York City: “I really miss my friends in LA a lot and the weather. But my lifestyle is really different in New York. People there work in lots of different industries, whereas in LA everyone is kind of related to entertainment — you know what you’re going to get if you go to that city.”

On her past decade of work: “I don’t regret anything, because everything that I’ve done has got me to where I am now and obviously it couldn’t have been any other way, and it wasn’t any other way. That’s how it happened. So I don’t regret a thing, but I’ve learned. And now I’m trying to grow.”

[From Marie Claire Australia

I must admit that I'm a little bit worried about Emma's career after her leading lady turn in Gangster Squad wasn't met with audience enthusiasm (not really her fault because the movie as a whole received poor reviews) even though she has the next Spider Man movie to pad her wallet for awhile. Oh, and she's still a spokesmodel for Revlon, so I guess she'll be fine. I do think that her geeky appeal wore thin after awhile, and she sounds like she got tired of playing the girl that always ends up making out with the dork in countless movies. Can't say I blame her for that one.

Here's some photos of Emma on the set of The Amazing Spider Man 2 in March.

Photos courtesy of Marie Claire and WENN

These are some new photos of Emma Stone filming Amazing Spider-Man 2 in Brooklyn yesterday. You know… I like Emma Stone so much. I think she’s incredibly talented, I think she’s beautiful and I think she’s one of the great hopes for her generation of actresses. But it’s gotten to the point where I just cannot even start with how much weight she’s lost over the past year, year-and-a-half. In The Help, in Easy A, in Crazy Stupid Love, she had a lovely figure. She’s a small girl, but her vibe back then was “I eat pasta and I don’t feel guilty about it either.” Now her vibe is “How many calories are in ice chips?”

I’m not body-shaming her, and I hope I’m not concern-trolling her either. It just really bothers me how an adorable, talented and healthy-looking young woman has become so, so thin. And what sucks is that with the Bosworth Body and the blonde hair, Emma now just seems like every other Hollywood girl. She lost what made her special. I feel like we should find a way to discuss this without condemning her, but recognizing that this is the pressure put on women young and old in Hollywood, by the media, by all of us even.

As for the costume choice… I thought she looked weird until I read some old quotes from Emma about how Gwen Stacy (her Spider-Man character) was supposed to dress. Apparently, these kinds of costume choices are right for the character and consistent with the comic books. Spider-Man is going to have another love interest in this sequel too – Mary Jane Watson will be around, and she’s being played by Shailene Woodley. There might be a real-life love triangle between Emma, Andrew Garfield and Shailene too – or it could have been some stupid Twitter joke. Who knows?

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Here are some photos from last night’s New York premiere of The Croods, which is an animated film with voice acting from Emma Stone, Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds. Surprisingly, Ryan Reynolds brought his wife Blake Lively to the premiere. Not surprisingly, they didn’t walk the red carpet together, but Ryan did pose with Emma and with a woman I’m pretty sure is Blake’s sister. Odd. Instead of making this all about Ryan (he’s super-boring), let’s talk about fashion!

Emma wore this black and white Lanvin which… puzzles me. The fabric choices puzzle me. The design puzzles me. This choice for a red carpet to support an animated film puzzles me. Something nice: she doesn’t have her bits and pieces hanging out, which is good. She opted for something “cutesy” yet high-fashion, which is appropriate for the occasion. The problem is that this dress is an utter design disaster. It looks like something Katie Holmes would design. And that’s not a compliment.

Speaking of bits and pieces hanging out, Blake wore Marios Schwab. I mean… yes, this is conservative for Blake. And while it’s a mini and her legs are SO CRAZY, it’s not like her ass is hanging out, so I guess that’s a good thing. It still feels kind of upstagey and “check out my killer legs and my insane PVC boobs!!!” Seriously, what kind of odd PVC cutout is that? Weird. Also weird: those strange gold rivets or buttons or studs along the side? What the hell? Did Duchess Kate design this?

So, which look do you prefer? I’m going with neither.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Did you know that I suck at Scrabble? I’m a Trivial Pursuit person, because that’s the way my mind works – it is an encyclopedia of inane trivia. But looking at letters and trying to form words? No, I can’t. I’m also not an anagram person. It takes me forever to do an anagram! So this Emma Stone is particularly bizarre for me. First of all, did you know Emma has a Twitter? She does, apparently – go here to see it. She has tweeted nothing. Except yesterday, when she apparently tweeted this:

Which is a ridiculous thing to tweet, and it reminded me of former Senator Scott Brown’s “Bqhatevwr”. Emma deleted it after a few hours, but it was up long enough for Perez Hilton to realize that it was an anagram of “Andrew and Shailene sitting in a tree”. The “Shailene” in question is Shailene Woodley, who is currently filming Spider-Man 2 with Emma and Andrew Garfield. Emma is still playing Gwen Stacy, and Shailene is playing Mary Jane Watson. Is this all some kind of viral advertising for the plotline of the Spider-Man sequel? Or is Emma and Andrew’s relationship really in trouble? Did Andrew dump Emma for Shailene? Ugh.

I don’t know. You know the backstory on Emma and Andrew, right? They got together when they were working on the first Spider-Man movie, only he had a girlfriend at the time – Shannon Woodward. I definitely think there was some overlap between Emma and Shannon. Has the same thing happened again? Or is this some kind of hipster joke?

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news? Emma Stone did a film with The Wax Figure Formerly Known As Nicolas Cage. The good news? It’s an animated film called The Croods so it’s not like Emma actually had to act against Nic Cage’s hairplug situation. Still, there’s more bad news: Emma wore a really horrible dress to the Berlin Film Festival premiere. I’m taking about this black thing, which is Gucci. WHY? I mean, I get that Emma is totally a Fashion Girl nowadays and she’s all about pulling off the avant-garde looks, but the sleeves on this thing are just… BAD. And I don’t get the hexagon-printed fishnet at the neck either. What crackhead designed this thing?

More bad news… Emma’s styling at the premiere was kind of terrible too. She was shiny, her hair made her look like a Mad Men extra, and I swear there’s something different about her brow situation. Also terrible? Her premiere appearance made me like her photocall appearance in Stella McCartney even more. And you know I rarely have anything nice to say about Stella’s designs! But this yellow shift dress is kind of cute. OK, it’s not the best but Emma pulls it off.

Here’s some good news too: Nic Cage is still with his wife, Alice Kim. I thought they broke up? I guess not. But I think he did buy her some new boobs.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Many of us fell in love with Emma Stone several years ago when she began to pop up all over the place, turning in impressive performances in film after film. Emma’s breakthrough in Hollywood was as a redhead with what seemed to be a completely healthy and attainable “look”. She looked like she ate solid foods and she just seemed like the kind of girl who would down for nachos and beer. That’s how she existed in the cultural zeitgeist for a while because I think many of us didn’t want to acknowledge the change Emma made soon after. Suddenly, she seemed to remake herself into a super-slender blonde, always whipping around in skinny jeans and the latest haute couture. The bubbly redhead who stood apart from the crowd became just another cookie cutter, skinny Hollywood blonde. It was disappointing.

But is Andrew Garfield disappointed too? Andrew and Emma have been together for… what? Like two years or something. She was already beginning this changeover when they started up, but it’s gotten worse since she’s been with him. So does Andrew approve? Well, Star says he doesn’t.

While promoting Gangster Squad, Emma Stone has looked shockingly gaunt – and boyfriend Andrew Garfield, 29, is worried.

“Andrew is freaked out,” says a source. “He thinks that if she drops any more weight she’ll be skeletal.”

Body expert Alicia Hunter agrees: “Emma appears to have gone from about 116 lbs. to roughly 105 – dangerous for a 5’6” woman like her.”

Emma, 24, has acknowledged that she’s size-obsessed: “You won’t hear me saying I have no body issues… I do have that thing of, ‘Oh my God, I’m disgusting… I feel so fat.’”

[From Star Magazine, print edition]

Ugh. I wish… I wish… I wish that Emma would go back to red and put on 10 pounds and stop trying to look like literally 80% of the girls in Hollywood. But I also hope that Andrew is figuring out a way to walk the fine line between accepting his girlfriend for whatever choices she makes and encouraging her to make healthy decisions. Because she’s not fat and she never was.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Vanity Fair is exhausting. And not in the good way. I remember a time – not that long ago – when the Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue was one of the best parts of the awards season. VF would spend serious time on the Hollywood Portfolio, profiling not just the hot new talents of the year, but some of the grizzled Hollywood veterans, the character actors, the actors the critics adored, the surprises of the year. But the last five or six years, Vanity Fair has been trying to “fix” what wasn’t broken, and this year’s Hollywood Issue is terrible. I guess VF got tired of always being criticized for putting young white women on the cover so they made this cover… all white. But instead of a cover jammed with young talent, it’s just Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper and a washed-out looking Emma Stone in bed together. WORSE MENAGE EVER.

It’s one for the history books—more than 75 different stars were photographed for Vanity Fair’s 19th Hollywood Portfolio, shot by Bruce Weber as the famed photographer’s definitive tribute to the town. Enfolding Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, Amy Adams and Jonah Hill, Selena Gomez and Alan Arkin, Weber’s vision called for a variety of talent—of both the two- and four-legged variety. The cover: Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper (impishly smiling in a bear suit and a gorilla costume, respectively) flank America’s sweetheart Emma Stone. Oscar winner Affleck cemented his status as Hollywood’s in-demand director with Argo, which received seven Academy Award nominations, including best picture, while Cooper’s Silver Linings Playbook received eight nominations, including Cooper’s first for best actor. Youngest-ever best-actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis also appears on the cover gatefold along with Olivia Wilde, Kerry Washington, and Eddie Redmayne.

Weber’s wild(life) wit continues inside, as Les Misérables’ Redmayne and Bella Heathcote dance with a bear, tiger cubs make an appearance, and the most fawned-over participant in the whole production—Tai the elephant—mugs for the camera. Tai, who has her own IMDb page and several starring film credits, at one point walked through the soundstage at Hollywood Center Studios and began to perform some of her favorite tricks. Later that day she even gave Gomez a ride on her trunk.

Editor Graydon Carter wanted to do something different for the portfolio’s 19th year, so he called on Weber to create “Bruce Weber’s Adventures in Hollywood,” an ode to the city’s warmer side. Weber convened the shoots at various historic Hollywood locations—including back lots, soundstages, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Musso & Frank Grill, and the old Marion Davies estate. He shipped selected LPs and a portable record player to provide the right musical accompaniment for the assorted cast of Hollywood characters. When Weber was staging Quincy Jones and three of his beautiful daughters—Rashida, Kidada, and Kenya—Weber asked them to come up with a song they all knew so that they could sing together. Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” from the Thriller album, which Quincy produced, was their choice.

V.F. special correspondent Bob Colacello, who accompanied Weber on many of the shoots, observes that Bruce’s “magic kingdom . . . is more Cinecittà than Disney, a place where Old Hollywood glamour is filtered through the lens of postwar Italian neo-realism, and Norman Rockwell wholesomeness is given an antic Fellini edge.” Having spent decades watching the movie business, Weber finds the unexpected warmth among its stars. There’s an intimacy to these images that shows that Hollywood isn’t just about glamour. This year’s portfolio is a celebration of the friendships that thrive among the people who call it home.

[From Vanity Fair]

Yeah. They chose to profile Halle Berry instead of Quvenzhané Wallis. They chose to profile Olivia Wilde (WTF?!!?!) instead of Jennifer Lawrence or Jessica Chastain. They can’t profile Joaquin Phoenix or Phillip Seymour Hoffman from The Master – not when last year’s Best Supporting Actor nominee Jonah Hill is around! I can’t complain about Kerry Washington or Eddie Redmayne, because both of them did have a great year. But profiling them at the same time as VF gives Olivia Wilde space just seems… wrong. This seems like a Hollywood Portfolio put together by your mom.

Photos courtesy of VF.

Surprisingly enough, this W Magazine photo shoot was not done by Terry Richardson. Shocking, right? No, Emma Stone was photographed by Juergen Teller for the February issue. Teller is best known (to me) for those minimalist Celine and Marc Jacobs ads that seem sort of anti-glam. So he brought his anti-glam sensibilities to Emma Stone, and here is the result. She looks washed out, tired and drawn, and the styling in a WRECK. I guess this is “high fashion” or a very editorial look. I hate it. You can read Emma’s W piece here, and here are some highlights from her interview:

Her Gangster Squad character: “Grace Faraday, who moved to Hollywood in the ’40s to become a star and ended up falling in with Mickey Cohen, a very well-known gangster, and his brood. Grace is also having an affair with Jerry Wooters, portrayed by Ryan Gosling. He’s one of the cops investigating Mickey Cohen. Grace is playing with fire—she’s constantly torn, caught in that classic conundrum between good and evil.”

Dramas versus comedies: “In real life, sometimes it’s uncomfortable for me not to go for the joke. I’ve been looking at that in myself lately. Often, joking for me is a way of diffusing the awkwardness of a situation, so it’s kind of exhilarating to be a part of projects where there’s nothing funny or lighthearted.”

Presenting with Ben Stiller at last year’s Oscars: “It was for best visual effects, so Ben and I had all these funny ideas. Planet of the Apes was nominated, so we thought we would bring a chimp onstage and I’d say, “Oh—it looks so real.” And Ben would be like, “It’s a real chimp.” And I’d be insisting, “Oh, my God—the work they do now is so staggering.” And he’d repeat, “It’s a real chimp.” But apparently, you can’t make the Oscar presentation about a particular movie or else the audience thinks you’re swaying the vote toward that movie. So instead, we pretended that Ben had been to the Oscars many times and I was this really overly enthusiastic Oscar presenter. I was very excited, and he was not…. Though a lot of people thought it was something else: When I came offstage, they were saying, “You were so drunk!” And I wasn’t. Not until after…”

Going to her first Oscars: “At first, when you go to premieres and award shows, you’re thinking, How the hell am I here? All these people I’ve never met are here, and it’s so cool! And then, as time goes on, it’s a little bit like, Ah…it’s more like work. There are only a couple of events where I’ve truly felt, That was an awesome night—and the Oscars was one of them.”

The movie that makes her cry: “The end of City Lights makes me cry every time I see it—when Charlie Chaplin walks by the shop window and the once blind girl brings him a flower and pins it to his lapel. She’s always thought that he was a millionaire, but he was really a tramp. She feels his hand and says, “You?” And he nods. He says, “You can see now?” And she says, “Yes, I can see now.” They cut back to his face, and he lights up like you’ve never seen. That last line—“Yes, I can see now”—has so many meanings. It’s echoed in every great romantic movie since then and in every great moment of life.”

[From W Magazine]

God, I almost cried just reading her describe the Chaplin film! But I’m PMSing, so maybe that’s it. On Wednesday, I burst into tears during Pres. Obama’s gun control speech too. As soon as he started talking about the 7-year-old girl named Grace who died at Sandy Hook and he said, “She loved pink… she loved the beach… she wanted to be a painter…” I had to stop eating my lunch to have a good cry. Ah, PMS. Does anyone else cry during the news these days?

Photos courtesy of Juergen Teller/W Magazine.

Last night was the huge LA premiere of Gangster Squad, which… I’m actually kind of worried about as a film. It has a huge, sprawling cast and it looks okay in general, but I’m worried that there’s not going to be much of a market for a shoot ‘em up gangster film set in the 1940s-1950s. If you want to see a great film about that era of gangsters and the LAPD, you really should just watch LA Confidential because OMG does that film stand the test of time.

Anyway, this post is just devoted to the few actresses who appear in this mostly-dude film. Emma Stone was the It Girl of the carpet in this red Lanvin cocktail dress and gigantic statement necklace. Even though I’m not crazy about the look, she (or her stylist) put the look together very well. The necklace works well with the simple dress without anything getting overpowered. Oh… it looks like the necklace is a Lanvin piece too. Interesting.

Should we talk about the blonde hair and the bangs? I miss her as a redhead so, so much. I will not accept that she’s a natural blonde because the ginger just suits her so much better. As for the bangs… ugh. I can’t.

Also at the premiere: Mireille Enos (the ginger from The Killing) in Emilio Pucci. The dress is meh, but she looks pretty. I like that she’s trying. I also love that she’s married to Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Here are some photos from the Ninth Annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards in NYC last night. They actually got a good group of people out – lots of models (which I don’t care about for the most part) and some actual movie stars. This is pretty much a pure fashion post, so let’s get to it! Miranda is wearing this Giulietta dress which… sucks. I cannot find anything redeeming about this whatsoever. It looks cheap. The color is wrong. The design is horrible. That fake bustier-thing is built into the dress. Or should I say “onto the dress”? It’s horrible. She’s beautiful, but the dress is made of failure.

Dakota Fanning in Jason Wu. Well, her makeup isn’t as noticeably awful as it was at the BD2 premiere. I can’t say I’m a fan of this brunette shade, and she’s still dressing like she’s a blonde.

Alexa Chung in Thankoon. She looks terrible. I don’t get the fascination with grown women wearing those high school-girl collars.

Liv Tyler in unknown… I love the combo of blue and black always and forever, but this ensemble isn’t working for me. The coat needed to be with a more structured dress and this dress is just… not my taste.

Christina Ricci in a Richard Chai Love Spring / Summer 2013. Yeah. I don’t get it. She looks healthy, but I loathe cut-out dresses. Did anyone see her on The Good Wife? Was she always such a terrible actress?

Ashley Greene in Wes Gordon. She looks really good (for her)!

Emma Stone wore Burberry! I LOVE THAT COAT. MUST HAVE COAT.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.