Emma Stone Has History of Panic Attacks - East Idaho News
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Emma Stone Has History of Panic Attacks

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062112 EmmaStone?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1340303495608Emma Stone stars in the upcoming “The Amazing Spiderman.” Columbia Pictures(NEW YORK) — She may have played plucky, outgoing heroines in The Help and Crazy, Stupid Love, but Emma Stone recently revealed that as a child she was something of a recluse because of panic attacks.

Stone, who covers the July issue of Vogue, tells the magazine that she began having panic attacks at age 8.

“I was just kind of immobilized by it,” she explains. “I didn’t want to go to my friends’ houses or hang out with anybody, and nobody really understood.”

Her parents found her a therapist, but it was getting involved in improv comedy at age 11 that changed her life forever.

“It gave me a sense of purpose. I wanted to make people laugh,” she explains. “Comedy was my sport. It taught me how to roll with the punches. Failure is the exact same as success when it comes to comedy because it just keeps coming. It never stops.”

By age 14, Stone had created a PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents to let her drop out of high school and start auditioning for roles. It worked.

Now, when Stone, 23, gets the occasional panic attack, she tries to channel her feelings. Recently, while filming of The Amazing Spider-Man, she put her focus into baking.

“I think I felt really out of control of my surroundings,” she tells Vogue. “I was just baking all the time. It seemed like it made me feel, if I put these in, I’ll know what the outcome is.”

Though she didn’t talk about her relationship with Spider-Man co-star and now-boyfriend Andrew Garfield, 28, she had plenty of good things to say about his acting.

“As an actor, I learned a lot from working with Andrew, in terms of his approach and the way he works,” she says of The Social Network star. “He’s incredibly giving.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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