Her films have racked up more than $1bn at the box office and she has won two Oscars under her stage name, but Emma Stone says she would now prefer to be called by her given name: Emily.

In a joint interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Nathan Fielder, her co-star in the surreal TV show The Curse, revealed that actors and crew members she worked with called her Emily.

Fielder said: “Before we continue, I’d like to say something. Her name’s Emily, but she goes by Emma professionally. So when there’s people that don’t know her, I end up saying Emma. But I’m going to just say Emily from here on.”

Stone responded: “You can say Emma. You can say anything.” Asked whether she would correct a fan who called her Emily, she said: “No. That would be so nice. I would like to be Emily.”

Stone said she used Emma professionally because her real name was taken by another actor in the Sag-Aftra union. Membership of the union is needed to work on Hollywood productions.

After taking home the best actress Academy Award in 2017 for her lead role in La La Land, Stone this year won her second Oscar for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, a period fantasy comedy adapted from the novel by Alasdair Gray. It was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youssef.

During her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, Stone addressed Lily Gladstone, who was tipped to win the best actress award for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon, saying she was “in awe” of her. “It’s been such an honour to be doing this with you and I hope we keep doing this together.”

She finished by thanking the team behind Poor Things, including Lanthimos: “Thank you for this gift of a lifetime in the role of Bella.”

Stone then thanked her parents and brother, her husband and her daughter, “who is gonna be three in three days and has turned our world technicolor. I love you bigger than the whole sky.”

Stone is due to appear in Kinds of Kindness, another film directed by Lanthimos. The film is due to debut at Cannes next month.

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