Emma Stone has two Oscars, two Golden Globes, and countless iconic roles. She just wants one more thing: for people to call her by her actual, birth name.
Born Emily Jean Stone in 1988, the actor said in 2017 that she was compelled to choose a different moniker as a teen. “My real name is Emily Stone, but when I started acting, that name was already taken by another actress, so I had to come up with a different one.” (Actors’ union SAG-AFTRA requires each member to have a unique working name.)
“For a 16-year-old, picking a new name is an interesting prospect.”
But “Emma” wasn’t her first choice. A look at Stone’s IMDB page shows that her early aughts credits, for appearances on shows such as Medium, were under the name “Riley Stone.” That lasted about six months, she said in an interview with W. “I did a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle, and one day they were like, ‘Riley! Riley!’ and I had no idea who they were talking to.”
“So then I changed it to ‘Emma’, because it’s closer to Emily.”
That said, she had the option of Emily J. Stone at the time, but didn’t take it, saying “I don’t think I can pull off the ‘J’.” Another possible factor in the decision was a fondness for the Spice Girls, particularly Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon from 2018, Stone said that “Growing up, I was super blonde … I wanted to be called Emma because of Baby Spice.
“And guess what? Now I am,” Stone said. It’s unclear if in the years since that interview, she’s grown less into the Spice Girls or more into her “J” era, but her desire to reclaim “Emily” seems to be ever-growing. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in a conversation published this week, she was again outed as an Emily by her co-interviewee and The Curse co-star Nathan Fiedler.
“I’d like to say something,” Fielder said as the interview kicked into gear. “Her name’s Emily, but she goes by Emma professionally. So when there’s people that don’t know her, I end up saying Emma. But I’m going to just say Emily from here on.”
“I freaked out a couple of years ago,” Stone said in response. “For some reason, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily.’”
That freakout has abated a bit, Stone said, to the point where she’s taken a “You can say Emma. You can say anything,” attitude. But still, she has a yearning for the name of her birth. If a fan addressed her as “Emily,” “That would be so nice,” Stone said. “I would like to be Emily.”