Emma Stone may be seen as the cool, sweet and down-to-earth Hollywood actress but it turns out she has a darker side - she spent her childhoods in cemeteries and thinking about death.

"There is something oddly comforting about death," she said in an interview with The Guardian. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 actress said she was "somewhat creepy," as a child growing up in Scottsdale, a desert town in Arizona which is home to more than 50 graveyards.

"I was always in cemeteries when I was a kid. I was really into spooky things like ghosts and death. I have always had an awareness of mortality. It makes you live more fully if you are aware that you only have a finite amount of time."

At only 25 years old, the actress has had a flourishing career with leading roles in The Help, The Amazing Spider-Man, Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad where she starred alongside Ryan Gosling.

She puts her early success down to this 'you only live once' mentality. "I have had an awareness of mortality since I was around six or seven," she says. "If it's not been in the forefront of my mind, it has at least been creeping over my shoulders."

She left high school at the age of 15 and moved to Los Angeles after putting together a PowerPoint presentation to persuade her parents that relocating to tinseltown would be the best thing for everyone.

Emma Stone with her boyfriend and The Amazing Spider-Man co-star Andrew Garfield at a film press conference in Tokyo

Her parents are of a similar mindset; they sanctioned the move to LA "so I could pursue what I wanted to do as quickly as possible. Everything happened younger because of that mentality; it has made me appreciate life in a really big way. Any time I lose sight of that and I feel like I am bulletproof, that's when I get into trouble," said the star.

The actress, who stars in upcoming film The Amazing Spider-Man 2 alongside real-life boyfriend Andrew Garfield, who plays Peter Parker, also she spoke about her difficulties in coping with fame and keeping her life private.

"You want to remain authentic but also want to retain some semblance of a private life. That's what I struggle with the most," she says.

"More work has come my way and it has compromised my anonymity. That loss is weird; I get to hear my name a lot more: 'Emma! Emma!' It's a bit odd. Different days I react differently, but it is still so foreign to me that someone could walk by and put a phone in my face as if I am not another person. I am not going to punch anybody. I'm not going to scream and rip someone's face off.

"Fortunately, it's not that people are camped outside my house, living there, waiting to get a picture. My life is not unliveable."

"I get to stay in wonderful places and travel first class. It feels very extravagant. It's very cool to have that experience. But you also realise that life is not about that at all once you are there. It's like, 'Wow, a big, empty house!'"

Nevertheless, she still enjoys popping in to Brooklyn's Morbid Anatomy Library - she lives in New York City - for her daily dose of darkness, especially for the "little foetal pigs in jars," she said.