Among the younger crop of Hollywood actresses, there is no clear heir to the throne once occupied by the likes of Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts, leaving a gap in the market for an attractive yet approachable comedic star who appeals to both men and women.
On the back of successes such as The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Help (2011), and Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), one imagines that Emma Stone could slip easily into that spot, especially now that Anne Hathaway seems to be going all dark and stormy with her film choices.
But Stone might be aiming just a little higher.
When she turned up at a Beverly Hills hotel last month to talk to the press about her new film - the 1940s cops-and-mobsters flick Gangster Squad, co-starring Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling - the 24-year-old was coming off a bit of a hot streak.
It began when she was cast in Zombieland, the slickly funny 2009 indie by Ruben Fleischer, who also directs her in the latest film.
The following year came Easy A, a quirky high-school comedy and sleeper hit that earned the little-known actress a 2011 Golden Globe nomination. This led to coveted roles in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love as well as the Spider-Man reboot, which took her career to another level.
In all these films, Stone's screen presence is a happy combination of several archetypes: Hot Girl, Funny Girl and Girl Next Door.
In person, the husky-voiced actress has all those qualities in spades, her grey-green eyes and elfin features radiating warmth and humour.
Refreshingly, she also seems to not have much of an ego, rolling her eyes and correcting herself when she thinks she has said something idiotic, at the same time milking each misstep for laughs.
When Life! asks about her string of hits on the red carpet - which propelled her from ingenue to fashion A-lister and landed her on several Best Dressed Lists last year, including US Vogue's - she does something you rarely hear actresses do: name-check her stylist.
"It's all my stylist, Petra Flannery. It's literally like, 'Do you want to wear that?', and 'Sure!' Of course, it's been inspiring to be around lovely creations and I truly understand now, in a different way, the art of what people create fashion-wise. I just wish that any time they say anything about my style, they put a picture of Petra there. Because there's no way I could do it without her."
She says she is tired of seeing her photographs in countless fashion magazines and movie posters.
"Yeah, it's a little bit overkill. I'm incredibly grateful for these opportunities and for getting to work with these people that I truly admire," says the actress, who counts co-star Gosling and director Fleischer as close friends.
"And for getting to make choices, which, for an actor, is like a dream because you usually just take whatever comes to you. I know this won't last forever so I'm really grateful, but... I am so sick of my face."
Stone, who is dating her Spider-Man co-star Andrew Garfield, also has her sights set on a bigger prize.
Her goal, she says, is to some day be able to produce or act in indie movies and other film projects that struggle to find funding.
When a reporter asks if she feels there are too many remakes and sequels at the box office, she points out, almost apologetically, that she is part of the problem because she is signed to Spider-Man, which looks set to become another big-budget franchise when the sequel comes out next year.
But she adds she is glad to have this job, and is frank about the reason.
"We're lucky with these franchises because you're involved in a story that people are going to see, so you are able to financially support yourself, and then go and do or help movies that don't necessarily have that kind of funding from the outset. Because it's not safe to make those movies anymore for a studio - they're not going to make any money," says Stone.
She reveals that the head of a studio recently told her there was no chance that film executives would greenlight the film Harold And Maude today, even though the 1971 dark comedy - about an unlikely romance between a 79-year-old woman and a teenage boy - has since become a cult classic.
"She said absolutely not. Nobody would go see Harold And Maude today. Black comedies are not an easy greenlight," Stone says incredulously.
"But if you're part of a franchise, you could go and get that made. It's an unbelievable gift, not one that I've exercised yet, but it's a really exciting thing to think about."
The roundtable interview at the Four Seasons Hotel is to promote Gangster Squad, however - a movie that is more Spider-Man than Harold And Maude with its big action set pieces and gun fights.
Stone confesses that she is unable to watch films with guns and violence in them, including scenes from this movie.
But she was drawn to the project by the glamour of the 1940s setting of the story, inspired by a real-life, off-the-books gangster squad formed by Los Angeles police officers.
"It was the golden age of Hollywood," says Stone, who sizzles on screen as a gangster's moll attracted to a policeman played by Gosling.
"I was attracted to actresses like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn - women who really wore the pants and had meaty female roles," she says.
To channel these screen icons in Gangster Squad, she had to squeeze her sylph-like frame into an unforgiving corset designed to give her an hourglass shape. The resulting curves were "very fake - trust me", she says.
"You get to get out of it at lunch, but you've got to be careful about lunch," she adds.
Thankfully, there were no tight costumes, or indeed any costumes at all, for her next project, which is The Croods, an animated comedy about a prehistoric family that opens in Singapore in March.
The actress lends only her voice to the production, a somewhat unexpected move for such a high-profile actress, and yet somehow thoroughly in keeping with Stone's persona.
Or maybe she really is, as she says, sick of seeing herself.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on January 10, 2013. For similar stories, go to sph.straitstimes.com/premium/singapore. You will not be able to access the Premium section of The Straits Times website unless you are already a subscriber.