Emma Stone Playfully Corrects ‘Kinds of Kindness’ Director Yorgos Lanthimos at Cannes on Real Name

Emma Stone is proud to go by her birth name of Emily.

Stone, 35, excitedly was greeted with her real name when she spoke at the Saturday, May 18, Festival de Cannes press conference for her new movie Kinds of Kindness.

A reporter from Kazakhstan’s 98 Magazine addressed her as “Emily,” before the movie’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, tried to correct the journalist and reveal that her moniker is “Emma.”

Stone, however, informed Lanthimos, 50, that the reporter had it right all along.

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“My name is Emily, thank you,” the Oscar-winning actress said with a laugh. “Very nice.”

The reporter then resumed asking his question about Stone’s acting in Kinds of Kindness, which debuted at Cannes one day earlier on Friday, May 17.

Stone, who reunited with Lanthimos on Kinds of Kindness after their collaboration on 2023’s Poor Things, was named Emily upon her birth. She changed it to Emma when she started acting because there was already an Emily Stone working for SAG-AFTRA. Emma was chosen as a nod to Emma Bunton, her favorite member of the Spice Girls.

“Growing up, I was super blonde, and my real name is Emily, but I wanted to be called Emma because of Baby Spice and guess what? Now I am,” Stone previously said during a 2018 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “It wasn’t necessarily because of her but yes, in second grade, did I go up to the teacher on the first day and ask her to call me Emma? Yes, I did, and was it because of Emma Lee Bunton from the Spice Girls? Yes, it was.”

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Stone has gone by Emma throughout her professional career, recently wanting to make a change back to her roots.

“When I get to know [individuals], people that I work with [call me Emily],” she told The Hollywood Reporter in April after her The Curse costar Nathan Fielder noted he calls her by her given name. “It’s just because my name was taken. Then, I freaked out a couple of years ago.”

Stone added, “For some reason, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily.’ Nathan calls me Em, which is easier.”

Stone further noted that if a fan referred to her as Emily while asking for a selfie or an autograph, she would not correct them.

“That would be nice,” she mused. “I would like to be Emily.”

Fielder, 41, then joked that he would plan to “switch it up” between calling her Emma, Emily or Em.