Emma Stone Talks Social Media, Motherhood and Losing Grip on Herself in Interview With Jennifer Lawrence

The Oscar winner says her perspective on kids has changed with time and age.

By Samantha Schnurr Aug 15, 2018 4:42 PMTags
Watch: "Elle" Editor-in-Chief Talks Emma Stone & Jennifer Lawrence

With a milestone birthday ahead, there are a few things Emma Stone is sure about. 

For one, social media isn't for her. As she explained to her famous gal pal Jennifer Lawrence in an interview for Elle's September issue, there's a reason you haven't found her on Instagram or Twitter.  

"I think it wouldn't be a positive thing for me. If people can handle that sort of output and input in the social media sphere, power to them," she said. 

On Instagram, there's a majority focus on the visual. While Stone said she her looks and her clothes are subjects that roll off her back today, there was a time when they didn't so easily. 

"I struggled a couple of years ago with feeling like how I looked was being scrutinized, and then I realized that anything that really bothers me that people could comment on is something I'm already worried about," she told her fellow Oscar winner. "So it's not really something that I'm overthinking right now. But in a different period, if I was feeling bad about something, it would bother me much more to hear people talking about it."

 

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With her 30th birthday approaching in November, the star is also sure of friendship, like the one she has with her well-known interviewer. "I think friendship is pretty much everything," Stone said. "Here's another turning-30 thing I've realized: You pick your family. You realize that your friendships, the people who go with you into these next phases of your life— you're choosing your family."

There was a shift in her actual family in the last 10 years when her parents divorced. Combined with the massive rise in her career, Stone lost her grip on herself. 

"When I was a teenager, I was in a real sweet spot. Then in my mid-twenties, I really lost the plot. A lot of things shifted, and it felt like whatever that protective layer was, that mask that you build for yourself—this is my personality, this is who I am—totally shattered," she recalled. "The structure of my life shifted so much that I didn't know how to relate to this new version, you know? My parents got divorced, and I went through this stuff with my career really starting. It all happened at once."

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But, it's all in the past. With six months away from set, the La La Land and Battle of the Sexes star has had time to regroup. "My twenties were a really interesting time, and there's been a lot that has happened in these past 10 years, both positive and not as positive. It's weird how much turning 30 crystallizes your life. Instead of just living the dreams that I had in my youth and getting to do the job that I love to do and making friends and going through all of that, it's like, Now what do I actively want as an adult?"

Part of the answer to that question may be marriage and motherhood. "My perspective about kids has changed as I've gotten older. I never babysat or anything. As a teenager, I was like, I'm never getting married, I'm never having kids. And then I got older and I was like, I really want to get married, I really want to have kids," she said in the magazine interview. 

While many of the Maniac star's dreams are "personal and less professional now," the actress is loosening her grip on the reins. 

As Stone put it, "It's less thinking about the next 10 years and what needs to happen and just sort of relaxing into what will be instead of trying to control the outcome."

This story appears in the September 2018 issue of Elle on newsstands August 28.

 

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