Emma Stone Could Win Her First Oscar

She's one of those actors: highly versatile but never not memorable. So, with awards season coming up, you might be asking yourself whether Emma Stone has an Oscar. In a nutshell? No, she doesn't. But that doesn't mean that her nomination for Best Actress for La La Land in this year's ceremony is the first time the Oscars has given her considerable talent a nod.

In 2015, she was nominated for the catchily-titled award Best Performance For An Actress In A Supporting Role for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). But the Oscar ended up going to Patricia Arquette for Boyhood, in a decision that was hard to debate with. After all, Arquette had been shooting Boyhood, which details a boy's childhood and adolescence with shots being taken in real time, for over 10 years. While Stone was fantastic in Birdman, she was just unlucky; who takes on a film of that sort of stature?

Besides which, while it's hard to imagine a time when Stone wasn't stealing the limelight in every damn thing she's been in, once upon a time, she used to be less of a leading lady than she is now. She played the girlfriend through films like The Amazing Spider-Man and was the love interest in films like Crazy, Stupid, Love.

While both are great films, Stone's time onscreen is limited — and, with it, how complex her characters are. But with her role in 2011's The Help, Stone seemed to be signaling that she hadn't just grown in years, but also in ambition. She was ready to step up to take one of the lead roles in a nuanced film about race relations in '60s Mississippi and the inhumanity of white middle-class families. She'd certainly chosen the right film; it was nominated for Oscars in four categories, and Octavia Spencer landed a win for Best Supporting Actress, but Stone wasn't favored in any of the categories.

So will this year be the year Stone wins an Oscar? Given the hugely positive response to La La Land, perhaps, but competition is stiff. Being nominated in the Best Actress category means she's up against the likes of Meryl Streep (a two-time Best Actress winner, one-time Best Supporting Actress winner and the record breaking person who holds the most Oscar nominations ever), Natalie Portman (who won Best Actress for Black Swan in 2011), Loving's Ruth Negga, and legendary French actor Isabelle Huppert.

Pencil in a reminder in your calendar to review Stone's Oscar situation on Sunday February 26. There's every chance that this could be the year she wins her very first Oscar.