Emma Stone Talks ‘La La Land’ Rehearsals

Emma Stone rehearsed for “months” to get her dance steps spot on for her new upcoming film La La Land. The 27-year-old actress underwent grueling sessions to get her moves right for the musical film, but admitted if she or co-star Ryan Gosling made mistakes they were able to stay in the motion picture because they were playing “real” people.

She said: “We rehearsed for months. Mandy Moore, the choreographer, took us through all the moves; and I had much to learn, even though I did song and dance as a kid in Arizona. Mia and Sebastian are two very real people, so the great thing about Damien [Chazelle, director] was that if we missed a step, or a beat, it wasn’t cut. I’m not Idina Menzel.”

Stone portrays aspiring actress Mia in the movie, opposite Gosling’s alter-ego, jazz pianist Sebastian, who fall for each other in Los Angeles.

The Amazing Spider-Man star took inspiration from her character’s idol, late actress Ingrid Bergman. Speaking about the Swedish star, she told the Daily Mail newspaper: “She was so focused and so professional in spite of everything that was going on in her private life.

“She was given a hard time by a Hollywood that wanted her to be a saint.”

While the movie is likely to pick up many a fan along the way, one big supporter of the film is Hollywood legend Tom Hanks.

After watching a screening of the motion picture at the Telluride Film Festival, he declared: “Man, that was the most fun I’ve had in a thousand years!”

This comes after he interrupted a press conference for his own movie Sully to say he thinks Hollywood is “doomed” if people don’t like La La Land.

He said: “This is not a movie that falls into some sort of trend. I think it is going to be a test of the broader national audience, because it has none of the things that major studios want. Pre-awareness is a big thing they want, which is why a lot of remakes are going on. [‘La La Land’] is not a sequel, nobody knows who the characters are … But if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed.”