Working with Woody intimidating: Emma

Actor didn’t even meet the director before she was offered the part.

LOS ANGELES: Actor Emma Stone says she felt intimidated by filmmaker Woody Allen while working in his directorial venture Magic in the Moonlight. The actor stars alongside Colin Firth in the film. For the 25-year-old, working under Allen’s direction was nerve-racking because the team weren’t given time to get comfortable with him.  Firth plays a celebrated stage magician, asked to debunk an American clairvoyant named Sophie Baker (Stone), who appears to have hoodwinked a rich American family in their home on the Riviera.

“It was hugely intimidating. I think after a while you get your sea legs a little bit, but there’s no rehearsal process, there’s no real getting-to-know Woody at all. You are just terrified. It’s all cold,” said Stone.

The Amazing Spider-Man star, who claims Allen “goes to great lengths” to keep his scripts under wraps, didn’t even meet with the director before she was offered the part.

“I didn’t physically see him. He didn’t pull me into any room and he wasn’t there when I read the script. Someone gave me the script. His assistant gave me the script and I read it, gave it back to her and then left,” she said.

Charming without being laugh-out-loud funny, Magic in the Moonlight seems like it is going to be casting its own spell. Shot on 35-mm by Darius Khnondji, who seems to catch every dust particle in the diffuse lemony light, the film is Allen’s most exquisite-looking movie in quite a while. 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2014.

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