Director Cameron Crowe addressed the controversy around his decision to cast Emma Stone as the partly Chinese character Allison Ng when Aloha premiered to widespread criticism last month. The charming actress is facing the controversy and admits it’s not the only hot-button topic she’s been in the middle of this year. “I’ve become the butt of many jokes,” the actress said.

The romantic dramedy was heavily panned for Stone’s hiring as well as its whitewashed cinematic portrayal of Hawaiian culture in general.

“I’ve learned on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is. It’s ignited a conversation that’s very important.”

Stone didn’t throw her Aloha director under the bus, defending Crowe’s character by claiming that he based it on a real-life lady he met whose Asian background wasn’t immediately obvious. Stone explains, “The character was not supposed to look like her background, which was a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese.”

She also discussed portraying the love interests of characters that were played by considerably older actors. She appears in Woody Allen’s latest film, Irrational Man, alongside Joaquin Phoenix, 40, which is due to be released on Friday.

“It’s rampant in Hollywood and it’s definitely been that way for a long time, both culturally and in movies,” Stone said. “But in Irrational Man, the film is contingent upon the age difference; the movie is about that disparity. And when I did Magic in the Moonlight Colin Firth and I talked about the gap which was huge, absolutely, because he was born the same year as my dad.”

“There’s a lot of conversation about how we want to see people represented on screen and what we need to change as a business to reflect culture in a clearer way and not in an idealized way,” Stone said, while also mentioning how often she plays a love interest to a much older man. “There are some flaws in the system. My eyes have been opened in many ways this year.”

“From the many voices, loud and small, I have learned something very inspiring,” Crowe said in an essay on his website, apologizing for the casting blunder. “So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.”

“As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud 1//4 Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one,” Cameron wrote. “A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.”

“However I am so proud that in the same movie, we employed many Asian-American, Native-Hawaiian and Pacific-Islanders, both before and behind the camera,” he said.