Emma Stone has been a fan of the musicals – on stage and on screen – since she was, by her own reckoning, “very young.” “My mom was a huge Les Mis fan and she played it in the house and explained what that was all about”, she told us at the Toronto Film Festival. “I think I always loved the art form of musicals, that you could move into song in that way.” Stone – who had an acclaimed turn on Broadway in 2015 playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret – is the very heart of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land as Mia, an aspiring actress struggling to leave a mark in the City of Stars, a reality she knows all too well. “Rejection can be brutal and people do look up at you and write you off before you have even talked. I could definitely relate to some elements of Mia’s struggle”. This is Emma Stone’s third Golden Globe nomination.