Emma Stone Thanks ‘Poor Things’ Director Yorgos Lanthimos “For The Gift Of A Lifetime In Bella Baxter”

Emma Stone stepped up to the stage saying the back of her dress was broken. “Oh boy,” she said, “I think it happened during ‘I’m Just Ken’, the big Ryan Reynolds number from Barbie that had unspooled previously.

“My voice is also a little gone,” she said, saluting the presenters and others in the category, which was considered one of most competitive of the night. “Sandra, Annette, Carey, Lily, I share this with you.” The others nominated include Sandra Hüller for Anatomy Of A Fall, Annette Bening for Nyad, Carey Mulligan for Maestro and Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, considered a strong contender.

“The other night I was panicking, Stone continued, “and Yorgos said to me ‘take yourself out of it’. And he’s right, because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something that is better than the sum of its parts.”

“Yorgos, thank you for the gift of a lifetime in Bella Baxter.”

Stone played that eccentric, complex young Victorian woman and transplant patient in Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal upside-down morality tale. She won a string of awards throughout the season acknowledging her exceedingly eccentric and original performance, which was the beating heart of the film.

It’s Stone’s second statuette since 2016 when she won Best Actress for La La Land.

Poor Things was written by Tony McNamara, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray.

Stone’s character Bella is brought back to life with the brain of an infant and raised by the unorthodox scientist who performed the procedure (Willem Dafoe). But she feels bored and trapped and runs off to tour Europe with her guardian’s lawyer (Mark Ruffalo). Her baby brain gradually starts to catch up to her adult body.

Sally Field, one one of the former Best Actress winners who introduced the nominees, summed it up, calling Stone’s Bella “unhinged, uninhibited and completely original. With the fearlessness of a toddler, she awkwardly steps into the world, awakening into her body and the sensation of being alive with without boundaries.”