EMMA STONE

She’d wanted to be an actress since she was a little girl and, at 15, after making a PowerPoint presentation to her parents, Stone persuaded her mother, Krista, to move to Los Angeles, temporarily leaving her father, Jeffrey, who runs a construction company, and her younger brother at home in Arizona. It took a couple of years – and a host of auditions and small parts in TV shows – but the gamble paid off and her film CV, at a relatively tender age, shows a range that not only includes her first love, which is comedy (Zombieland, Magic In The Moonlight), but meaty, dramatic roles, too. She played aspiring journalist Skeeter Phelan, who decides to document the lives of African-American women working as maids in The Help, a mob girlfriend in Gangster Squad and the troubled daughter of a fading movie star (played by Michael Keaton) in the forthcoming Birdman.

However, being cast as Gwen Stacy opposite Andrew Garfield in the latest reboot of the successful Spider-Man franchise is what has shot her into the popular consciousness. (Garfield plays Peter Parker and their on-screen romance spilled over into real life; they’ve been a couple ever since.) As well as starring in Birdman, which has been tipped for an Oscar win, Stone has also just made her Broadway debut as Sally Bowles, opposite Alan Cumming as Emcee, in the Sam Mendes-directed musical Cabaret, which she will appear in until February.

Working with stars such as Bill Murray, Ryan Gosling and Michael Keaton, she’s obviously talented and a consumate professional but our conversation proves Stone is also very funny, smart and laughs a lot – another reason why we wanted her as Psychologies’ cover star.