How Old Was Emma Stone in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’?
Emma Stone had the opportunity to play Spider-Man’s main love interest Gwen Stacey in The Amazing Spider-Man series. But how close was she to the character’s actual age?
How old was Emma Stone compared to Gwen Stacey?
Stone was already used to playing high school characters before snagging her role in The Amazing Spider-Man. Her breakthrough feature, Superbad, saw her portraying a high school crush. Then she went on to revisit high school in the movie Easy A, where she played the lead. The Amazing Spider-Man would continue this tradition for Stone, as it saw her playing high school student Gwen Stacey.
Although Stone wasn’t technically a teenager during the film, she was close enough. It was announced in October 2010 that she was cast in the film, with production beginning for the feature in December of that same year. This would’ve made Stone 22 years old at the time.
However, Stone wasn’t sure she even wanted to be in the superhero franchise initially.
“I heard about Spider-Man and I didn’t think it was something I would want to be a part of. I just thought that probably isn’t right for me. Then I [auditioned with Andrew Garfield] and realized that this was a really interesting, fantastic relationship between two people and that I was being really closed-minded,” she once said, according to Digital Spy.
How Emma Stone felt about Gwen Stacey’s role in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’
Emma Stone returned for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The actor was 24 when principal photograph began.
The sequel remained pretty faithful to the comics as far as Stone’s character was concerned. Stacey’s fate in the film was the same in its source material, albeit under different circumstances. But while promoting Amazing Spider-Man 2, Stone remembered it being almost impossible for Stacey’s fate to remain a secret. Photos that leaked from the film’s set, and trailers, provided enough clues for fans to put together.
“I had this whole marketing campaign in my head. I thought it would be like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense or Catfish: ‘Okay, no one is ever going to know anything, but when the people who have read the comic see the movie and they see me step out of that cab in the outfit, they’re going to know.’ And, obviously, it did not work out that way,” Stone once told HuffPost.
“There were photos online while we were shooting, and then in the trailers she’s literally falling. Everything is there except for [the death]. You see so much and if you’ve read the comics, you know that outfit. So, my marketing campaign was not their marketing campaign.”
Emma Stone helped make sure that Gwen Stacey wasn’t just a damsel in distress
Stone confided that Stacey’s character wasn’t just based off of one person’s vision. It was a team effort, with Stone offering her own creative input on the role at the time. This helped create a character that Stone could be proud of when it was all said and done.
“Nobody ever wanted Gwen to be a damsel in distress throughout this entire series. It was always very clear that Gwen and Peter were going to be equals, down to the camera test. That was the rapport we were able to find even in the audition process. That was never really a question. We workshopped it a little bit, and it was collaborative. The ‘I break up with you’ scene [in Amazing Spider-Man 2], I suggested that and they were really open to it. They put that in the script. I think the whole team was on board for that,” she said.
She also felt that Gwen Stacey had her own purpose and dreams in the movie, which helped her be something more than just Spider-Man’s girlfriend.
“As Peter has become more comfortable with being Spider-Man, he’s less comfortable in who he is and what’s happening with him personally,” she said. “Gwen, meanwhile, is becoming much more solid in following her destiny. I think the dynamic was different in this one, but the natural magic that Peter and Gwen have between them, was just something we tried not to over think.”
