Emma Stone: My First Heartbreak Was Like Being 'Killed'

By Maggie Coughlan

08/27/2012 at 03:45 PM EDT

Emma Stone may play countless comedic heroines but that doesn't mean the actress hasn't experienced her fair share of heartbreak.

Stone speaks candidly with director Cameron Crowe about love in the September issue of Interview magazine (on newsstands Aug. 28).

"What was your first heartbreak like?" Crowe asks.

"I was crawling on the floor. I remember throwing up," Stone, 23, replies.



"It was so visceral. It's like someone has killed you and you have to live through it and watch it happen. ... It was awful," she says.

Although painful, Crowe and Stone discuss channeling their distress into their work.

"Creatively, do you think it's true or false that many of the artists who we know and love are often governed by a single event that happens in their life, and that event then becomes this vivid, iconic thing they return to over and over in their work?" Crowe asks.

"One-hundred percent true. That's not actually my moment or my theme – my moment is not one that I would probably talk about," says Stone. "But there is a moment that keeps coming back over and over throughout my life. It's the thing that I return to when I'm making a decision out of fear. Anything that I'm doing out of fear is defined by that moment."