Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are perhaps Hollywood’s most iconic couple, capturing attention for their incredible chemistry both in front of and behind the camera.
The couple met while filming a film opposite each other. Woman of the Year (1942) leading to the start of the most talked about relationship in Hollywood folklore. Their affair was kept secret from the public, but most people who worked with them knew about their affair, which was difficult to hide, considering that after their first meeting they worked together in eight more films.
It’s not easy to replicate Hepburn and Tracy’s chemistry, but Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield managed to do it in a way.
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What the Spider-Man producer said about Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield’s love story
The makers were keen to revive the story of Web-Head almost a decade after the huge success of the Tobey Maguire-led film. Spider-Manthey settled on Andrew Garfield to play Peter Parker and Emma Stone to play his love interest Gwen Stacy in The Incredible Spider-Man.
What started out as professional chemistry on the set of a movie turned into flirting and playing pranks on each other before sparks flew and they came together looking eerily like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Avi Arad, the film’s producer, noted the same thing, stating (via The Guardian): “The chemistry between these two is like old Hollywood, Hepburn and Tracy.”
Like Garfield’s Spider-Man’s thrilling battle with a mysterious reptilian foe (Rhys Ifans), fans and critics alike admired Peter and Gwen’s on-screen chemistry. The film was a huge financial success, grossing $758 million at the box office.
Arad attributed the film’s impressive performance in part to “lucky casting”.
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How the Spider-Man director reacted to seeing the special chemistry between Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield
The couple went from an on-screen couple in the early days of filming to a real-life couple before the film was released in 2012.
However, The Incredible Spider-Man It didn’t even take long for director Marc Webb to notice that there was something special between Stone and Garfield. He told Vanity Fair:
“During the screen test, I knew there was something there. However, when we shot that scene where they run into each other in the hallway, it’s a very simple scene, a stereotypical scene that we’ve seen in movies before. They both just brought some nervous teenage energy to the game and brought such humanity to it.”
They continued dating while filming the film. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and did not hide their affection for each other during the premiere tour. In an interview with ABC News La La Land the actress admitted:
“Working with him is like a dream. He’s obviously one of the greatest actors I think alive today and also just a wonderful person, so I love him very much.”
In this film, Gwen and Peter share a much more complex dynamic: she breaks up with him while trying to emphasize her individuality and achieve her dreams. Both Stone and Garfield again performed brilliantly in front of the camera, and the sequel ($709 million worldwide) managed to repeat the performance The Incredible Spider-Man at the register.
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Source: The Guardian, Vanity Fair, ABC News.