
Age: 37
female
Emily Jean "Emma" Stone (born November 6, 1988) is an American actress and producer. She has won two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Her career began at Phoenix's Valley Youth Theatre with The Wind in the Willows (2000) and at fifteen, she moved to Los Angeles, debuting in an unsold television pilot, In Search of the New Partridge Family (2004). Stone gained recognition through teen comedies like Superbad (2007), Zombieland (2009), and Easy A (2010), her first starring role, earning a Golden Globe nomination for the latter. Her roles in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and The Help (2011) highlighted her versatility, while The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its 2014 sequel elevated her global profile. Stone earned her first Oscar nomination for Birdman (2014), and won Best Actress for La La Land (2016) and Poor Things (2023); she has also earned nominations for The Favourite (2018) and Bugonia (2025). She starred in Battle of the Sexes (2017), Cruella (2021), and Maniac (2018). In 2020, she co-founded Fruit Tree, producing films Problemista (2023) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024). Stone's collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, inspired by her admiration for his films like The Lobster (2015) and Dogtooth (2009), spans The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness (2024), and Bugonia. This partnership, driven by her trust in his vision, reflects her deliberate shift toward experimental cinema over mainstream Hollywood projects.

Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) crafted The Running Man early in his career, though after such mega-hits as Carrie and The Shining. A bit of a departure from the supernatural horror that is most frequently associated with his work, the novel describes a science fiction dystopia where market capitalism and television game shows have spiraled out of control, and the separation between the haves and the have-nots has been formalized with separate currencies. King establishes characters quickly, creating sympathy in the first few pages for Ben Richards--whose 18-month-old baby girl is suffering from a horrible cough, perhaps pneumonia. Not able to afford medicine, Richards enters himself in the last-chance money-making scheme of the Free-Vee games. The games include Treadmill to Bucks, in which heart-attack prone contestants struggle to outlast a progressively demanding treadmill, or the accurately named Swim the Crocodiles. After a rigorous battery of physical and mental examinations, Richards is assigned "Elevator Six"--the path of a chosen few--that leads to The Running Man game. In this game, the stakes and the prizes are raised. Success means a life of luxury. Failure means death. Unfortunately, few ever win the game; in fact, as the producer tells Richards, in six years no one has survived.

