Emma Stone may have split from boyfriend of three years, Andrew Garfield, in April, but the Birdman actress, 26, still reflects fondly on their time filming the blockbuster Amazing Spider-Man franchise together, as does her ex.
In a chat with Diane Keaton for Interview magazine’s May issue, Stone gets nostalgic after Keaton recalls a touching quote from her former flame. “Andrew Garfield said, ‘Working with Emma was like diving into a thrilling, twisting river [Stone laughs] and never holding on to the sides. From the start. To the end. Spontaneous. In the moment. Present. Terrifying. Vital. The only way acting with someone should be.'”
When asked her take on Garfield’s kind words, Stone was quick to return the kudos. “He is such a poet,” Stone told Keaton. “But that’s the way he writes in general. So I hear it and of course my heart swells up. And I also know that he writes things like that on a daily basis.
“What a guy. He’s so poetic. He is a real Wordsworth,” Stone added with a laugh.
Though it’s unclear when Stone’s chat with Interview took place — pre- or post-split from Garfield — the actress did go into detail about how the last year of her life left her at times “flailing.” (Indeed, her last few months with Garfield were tough, as a source told Us the actor was in a “dark place” and “not being the best partner” while prepping for his next role in Martin Scorsese‘s Silence.)
“The only thing that has ever made me feel calm is knowing clearly what I want. I feel safer when I know what I want. When I don’t know what I want, I feel like I’m flailing through the universe,” she told Interview.
Just how did Stone overcome her crippling fear? She signed on to appear as Sally Bowles in the Broadway revival of Cabaret.
“I feel more ready than I ever have to do something incredibly different and challenging and scary,” she said. “[Since Broadway] I feel more like I understand acting in a different way. It’s totally different when you’re shooting something. . . Only in the past six months to a year have I felt like I can really try these different things. I think I was really scared of that for a long time. And if something was really challenging, I thought that I was just going to fall on my face and embarrass myself. I’m just less scared of that now, of failing.”