Emma Stone does not merely collect accolades. She accumulates them at a pace that outstrips almost every performer of her generation, and in January 2026, when the 98th Academy Award nominations were announced, she added two more to a tally that already defied belief. For her role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark sci-fi comedy Bugonia, the 37-year-old earned nominations for both Best Actress and Best Picture as a producer – making her the youngest woman in Oscar history to have accumulated seven Academy Award nominations across a career. The previous record holder was Meryl Streep, who reached her seventh at 38 in 1988. Only Walt Disney, at 34 in 1936, accumulated seven at a younger age overall.
It is a statistic that demands a pause. Stone has, in the space of a little over a decade, won two Best Actress Oscars – for La La Land in 2017 and Poor Things in 2024 – and earned nominations for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), The Favourite, and now Bugonia. She is also the first woman ever to receive dual acting and producing nominations for two separate films, having achieved that rare double with both Poor Things and Bugonia. The trajectory is not merely impressive. It is historically unprecedented.
From Scottsdale to Stardom: The Early Years
Emily Jean Stone was born on 6 November 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona, the daughter of Jeffrey Charles Stone, a general contractor, and Krista Jean Stone. As a child, she suffered from severe baby colic that left her with nodules on her vocal cords – the origin of that unmistakable husky voice that would later become one of her most recognisable trademarks. At 15, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother to pursue acting, and within a year had won a place on the VH1 reality show In Search of the New Partridge Family, performing a cover of Pat Benatar’s “We Belong.” The project never made it past its pilot, but it opened the door.
Television appearances in Malcolm in the Middle and Medium followed, along with a regular role on the short-lived drama Drive in 2007. That same year, Stone made her film debut in Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow’s Superbad, a raucous teen comedy that grossed over $170 million worldwide and announced her as a comic talent to watch. Roles in Zombieland and The House Bunny followed in quick succession, but it was her turn as the quick-witted Olive Penderghast in Easy A (2010) that transformed her from supporting player to bona fide lead. The film earned Stone a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and a place on Time‘s list of the Top 10 Everything of 2010.
“I was really drawn to Olive’s honesty,” Stone told Access Hollywood at the time, describing her attraction to the role. “She’s unapologetically herself, and that felt like something worth playing.”
The Lanthimos Effect: A Partnership That Changed Everything
If Easy A established Stone as a comedic force, her collaboration with the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos recast her as one of the most daring actors of her generation. The partnership began with The Favourite in 2018, in which she played Abigail Masham, a scheming cousin battling Rachel Weisz’s Sarah Churchill for the affections of Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne. The film premiered to rapturous reviews at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, and Stone earned her fourth Golden Globe and a BAFTA nomination for the role. More importantly, it forged a creative bond that would prove transformative for both artist and muse.
Speaking to Numéro about the relationship, Stone described it in terms that reveal something essential about her working method: “We understand each other. We don’t need to talk too much about things. He doesn’t like to intellectualise, which is wonderful because neither do I. It is really helpful, whether we are discussing a character’s physicality or just exploring rhythms and trying things out. He is open to experimentation.”
That openness produced Poor Things in 2023, a surreal science-fiction fantasy adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel, in which Stone played Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life through a brain transplant who proceeds to navigate Victorian London with the unbridled curiosity of a newborn. The performance won her a second Best Actress Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and a Critics’ Choice Award. She was also nominated as a producer when the film was shortlisted for Best Picture, making her the second woman after Frances McDormand to receive dual acting and producing nominations for a single film.
“I think I blacked out,” Stone said backstage at the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024, visibly shaken. “I was very shocked. I still feel like I am spinning a little bit.” On stage, she had paid tribute to her director: “Yorgos, thank you for the gift of a lifetime in Bella Baxter.”
Bugonia: Shaving Her Head and Breaking Records
Bugonia, released in October 2025, was the fifth Lanthimos-Stone collaboration and perhaps their most audacious. A remake of the 2003 South Korean cult hit Save the Green Planet!, the film stars Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy-obsessed man who kidnaps a powerful CEO – played by Stone – convinced she is an alien intent on destroying the Earth. For the role, Stone shaved her head, wearing wigs in public for months to keep the transformation a secret. The film also featured Alicia Silverstone and marked the screen debut of Aidan Delbis.
The world premiere at the 82nd Venice Film Festival in August 2025 drew a nearly seven-minute standing ovation. When the Oscar nominations came in January 2026, Bugonia earned four nods – Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score – and Stone’s individual nominations pushed her career total to seven, breaking the women’s record previously held by Streep. As our coverage of her record-breaking year at the Golden Globes made clear, this was not a single-vote anomaly but a groundswell of critical consensus.
“It’s not about me,” Stone had said at the 2024 ceremony, but the numbers tell a different story. No other actress currently active has won two Best Actress Oscars before the age of 40. Katharine Hepburn holds the all-time record with four Best Actress wins; Frances McDormand and Meryl Streep each have three. Stone, at 37, is already closer to that pantheon than anyone could have predicted when she was reading for the role of Violet Trimble in a cancelled Fox drama in 2007.
Fruit Tree: The Producer’s Imperative
Stone’s ambitions extend well beyond the performing chair. In 2020, she and her husband, the former Saturday Night Live writer and director Dave McCary, founded the production company Fruit Tree. The outfit secured a first-look deal with A24 and, in October 2024, signed a broader partnership with Universal Pictures. Fruit Tree’s output already includes I Saw the TV Glow (2024), A Real Pain (2024) – for which Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed – and the documentary series The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025).
“Fruit Tree is a place for stories that challenge, disturb, and delight,” Stone and McCary said in a joint statement when the company launched. “A24’s commitment to thoughtful and original storytelling feels rare and vital.”
The production slate speaks for itself, and the Universal deal has already borne fruit in the shape of The Catch, a romantic comedy in which Stone will co-star with Chris Pine. Directed by McCary – making his second feature after 2017’s Brigsby Bear – and written by Jen Statsky and Travis Helwig, the film is reportedly inspired by the infamous Steve Bartman incident, in which a baseball fan inadvertently cost his team a crucial game. Universal has set a release date of 21 May 2027, and the project will mark Stone’s first rom-com since Crazy, Stupid, Love. over a decade ago.
The Missteps That Made Her
No career of this magnitude is without its stumbles, and Stone has been characteristically candid about hers. In 2015, she appeared in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha as Allison Ng, a character of Hawaiian and Chinese descent. The casting provoked accusations of whitewashing, and Stone publicly acknowledged the criticism. “I should not have taken this part,” she said at the time. “I am sorry for that. I have learned a great deal from this experience.”
The incident did not derail her career so much as refine her instinct for material. Stone has rarely made the same mistake twice, and her subsequent choices – Birdman, La La Land, The Favourite, Poor Things – represent a sustained run of critical and commercial success that few actors of any age can match.
What Comes Next
The slate ahead is formidable. Beyond The Catch, Stone is attached to produce a Miss Piggy film alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Cole Escola – a project that emerged when Lawrence let slip the news on the Las Culturistas podcast in November 2025. “Emma Stone and I are producing a Miss Piggy movie and Cole is writing it,” Lawrence told hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. “It’s fucked up that we haven’t done a movie together.”
A sequel to Cruella, the 2021 Disney villain origin film, has also been confirmed, with Stone returning to the role that grossed over $226 million worldwide. And Lanthimos, despite announcing a break from filmmaking after Bugonia, remains her most frequent creative partner – their working relationship shows no sign of cooling.
At 37, Emma Stone occupies a position in the industry that is at once singular and instructive. She has not achieved her record by playing it safe. She has achieved it by shaving her head for a Greek absurdist, producing stories through her own company, and choosing roles that other actors might have turned down. The youngest woman ever to earn seven Oscar nominations did not arrive here by accident. She arrived here by refusing to stop pushing – and by trusting that audiences would follow her wherever she chose to go.
