A speech impediment that led to acting, overcoming her biggest fears and the role that skyrocketed
her to fame.
Emily Blunt has been in the limelight for over a decade, but where did it all start?
Keep watching to see her transformation from the beginning!
Emily Blunt was born on February 23, 1983.
She grew up as the second of four children in a charming southwest borough of London
called Roehampton.
By all accounts, her middle-class upbringing was quite pleasant.
Her mother Joanna was an actress-turned-teacher, and her father Oliver was a lawyer.
Meanwhile, her siblings Felicity, Sebastian, and Susannah are all intelligent and artistic,
just like Emily.
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Emily described herself, saying,
"[I was] the naughty one who wanted to go clubbing on holiday."
And as she revealed to Glow Magazine in 2012,
"I was planning on going to university to study modern languages to be a translator
for the U.N."
But that all changed when acting came across her path.
Emily Blunt's childhood wasn't without its struggles, as she developed a stutter when
she was around six years old.
By the time she was 11 or 12, it had become a consistent part of her speech.
As she explained to Marie Claire in 2020,
"It wasn't the whole part of me; it was just a part of who I was.
There were certain people who liked to define me by that.
That was tough."
You might assume that a stutter would be an impediment to an eventual acting career, but
the opposite actually proved to be true in Blunt's case.
When she was 12, a teacher suggested that she take part in the school play and that
she use an accent.
As she recalled,
"That was a very liberating thing for me as a kid.
Suddenly, I had a fluency.
The removal of yourself from yourself, in some ways, was freeing."
So after playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, she'd found both an artistic outlet and a
way to work with her stutter.
"God bless us, everyone."
Blunt continued acting throughout the rest of her school years.
At the age of 16, she left home for a weekly boarding school in Surrey called Hurtwood
House.
While there, she honed her acting skills with drama teachers like Adrian Rawlins, whom you
might know as the actor who played Harry's dad James in the Harry Potter films.
Eventually, one of her school plays appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she
happened to be seen and signed by Rawlins' agent.
This in turn kickstarted her career.
As she described it to Great British Life in 2018,
"It's strange to imagine how things might have turned out had I not gone to Hurtwood,
because it was there I was discovered by an agent, who saw a play I was in.
So, I'm very grateful now that I didn't go to [my first choice school] Westminster."
After landing an agent while she was still in school, Blunt soon found herself auditioning
for professional projects, and it wasn't long before the industry took notice.
At just 18, she was cast in a play on London's West End, called The Royal Family.
The production was directed by Peter Hall and also starred Dame Judi Dench, who eventually
became a mentor for Blunt.
As Blunt recalled to The Guardian in 2015,
"I just heard that voice in the room behind me, and I remember feeling the air go out
of me.
And she said, 'Hello, darling.
If anyone gives you any trouble in this, you come straight to me.'"
Dench even invited Blunt to her dressing room after every show.
As the older actress recalled to Vanity Fair in 2018,
"Poor Emily.
It wasn't a great play, but we had the most fun doing it."
Dench clearly saw something in the younger actress way back then, and it makes perfect
sense to her how far she's come.
As she put it,
"It doesn't surprise me at all where she is.
I am thrilled that she is a big beautiful star."
Sometimes, all it takes is one role to catapult an actor from relative anonymity to worldwide
fame.
For Emily Blunt, that role was Emily Charlton, the sassy British assistant to Meryl Streep's
Miranda Priestly in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada.
Blunt definitely considers the film her big break.
As she put it to Vulture in 2015,
"Devil was the film everyone loved and saw, so it had a huge impact on my career.
It helped reveal a certain part of me; I wasn't just the ingenue or the English rose.
It helped me be seen as a character actor, which is what I'd always wanted."
"In order to prepare, you went around and you found really horrible people to emulate,
right?
Where do you find horrible people?
I like to soak up people on the street."
The role was so iconic that it's still helping Blunt land new parts to this day.
For Rob Marshall, who directed her in Mary Poppins Returns and Into the Woods, seeing
her in Devil was all it took to intrigue him.
As he told Vanity Fair in 2018,
"She reminded me immediately of a young Maggie Smith because of the humor, the acting chops,
the vulnerability.
I see her having an incredibly long career because of the uniqueness of her extraordinary
talent.
It transcends beauty and looks and age."
In 2008, Emily Blunt met John Krasinski in a restaurant through a mutual friend, and
according to her, it was basically love at first sight.
As she put it during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers:
"He just stood there and made me laugh.
And did you know right away?
I'm sorry to dig in here.
I kind of did."
Soon enough, Blunt and Krasinski were dating, and less than a year later, he proposed.
As he revealed to Access Hollywood,
"She did cry after I cried and we cried and then everyone around us was crying."
For Blunt, meeting her future husband was absolutely life-changing.
Not only did he become her life partner, he also became her biggest cheerleader.
As she gushed to InStyle,
"When I feel the support that I have from him, I feel invincible.
There's someone behind you on your good days, and someone in front of you on your bad days."
That sounds like a fairytale marriage if you ask us!
Many little girls grow up dreaming of a career on the stage or screen, in which Hollywood
is a mystical, magical place where dreams really do come true.
Emily Blunt used to be one of those little girls with big dreams, but over the years,
her perception has changed.
As she mused to Vanity Fair in 2018,
"[Hollywood] appears to be made of rainbows and sunbeams.
Then you realize it's called show business because it is a business."
Once Blunt got used to treating her profession like any other business, she changed her approach.
Now, she likes to keep a healthy distance from the pressures of Hollywood, where she
likes to go in, do her job, and then get out again, all while keeping a thick skin.
As she put it,
"I think you have to wear a helmet [...] You are part of a machine that is moving and will
overwhelm you and drown you if you are not tough in it."
Nowadays, fans of Emily Blunt know that she's an incredible singer, which she's demonstrated
clearly in Mary Poppins Returns and Into the Woods.
However, there was a time when she wasn't exactly the confident belter that she is today.
In fact, when her agent offered her the opportunity to audition for musicals, such as the musical
Nine, she flat-out refused to go to them.
As she confessed to Deadline in 2014,
"I got approached to go and audition for all of them and I sprinted away as fast as I could.
I was very daunted to go and sing for people."
"You're embarrassed, watching yourself sing.
Oh, my God!
It's hideous watching it, yeah."
So what changed?
Well, apparently, Blunt simply couldn't say no to the team involved with Into the Woods.
As she explained,
"I was very reluctant to audition, but I felt encouraged by [director] Rob Marshall this
time.
Also, there were all kinds of temptations going on with Into the Woods, such as working
with Meryl Streep again."
Thank goodness Blunt finally plucked up the courage to show off her pipes!
In 2018, Emily Blunt took on the legendary role of a certain British nanny in Mary Poppins
Returns.
The iconic part was first played on the big screen by Julie Andrews in the 1964 original.
Naturally enough, Blunt realized that she had some pretty big shoes to fill.
But when director Rob Marshall offered her the role, she was able to brush her fears
aside.
As he revealed to The Hollywood Reporter,
"I heard her inhale with excitement.
I knew that, of course, we all had trepidations and fear about how you follow that brilliant
first film, but I know how fearless she is and I knew she would say yes."
But Blunt wasn't just concerned about doing justice to the role.
She was also afraid of both the singing and the flying that the performance required.
As she admitted to The Hollywood Reporter,
"I'm terrified of both singing and heights.
I had to sing while suspended from a great height in this movie.
Those days were quite traumatic but I survived and in the end, I felt quite proud.
It was a cathartic experience."
"It is wonderful to see you.
Yes, it is, isn't it?"
While some celebrities can't seem to get off of social media, Emily Blunt is quite the
opposite.
In fact, she is positively resistant to it.
What it comes down to is the fact that she prefers to keep her private life private,
and she's not exactly worried that she's missing out.
As she explained to Vanity Fair in 2018,
"I strongly believe that my job is to persuade you that I am playing somebody else, so exposing
too much personally is just something I can't get on board with."
And when it comes to interacting with fans, Blunt follows some advice that she received
from Frances McDormand.
As Blunt noted,
"When someone asks her for a picture, she says, 'You know what?
I've actually retired from that.
But I would like to shake your hand and meet you.'"
So now you know what to do if you run into Blunt in public and want to say hi!
Many actors begin to explore other creative roles behind the scenes after their careers
in front of the camera really take off.
After all, when they're only actors, they typically have little control over the direction
of their projects.
So perhaps Emily Blunt had all that in mind when she got into producing.
Specifically, in 2022, she's executive producing and starring in The English, a miniseries
about a woman seeking revenge for the murder of her son.
For Blunt, slowly moving into a producing role has been an important change in her career.
As she explained to Harper's Bazaar in 2020,
"You get to the point where you've been doing something long enough and you do have an opinion.
It's a very hard thing for a British person to start discovering their own worth, but
at some point you've got to."
We can't wait to see if Blunt's work behind the camera is just spellbinding as the rest
of her career!
The COVID-19 pandemic changed all of our lives.
For Emily Blunt, lockdown gave her a chance to recalibrate and reconnect with her priorities,
and what she discovered was that her number one priority was always family.
As she explained to OK!
Magazine,
"We would try to muddle our way through homeschooling, just like everyone else — but I think this
time at home gave people the ability to take stock in what you have and to notice every
detail of your children."
"It's all I've been doing."
Ultimately, Blunt learned to savor the moments of togetherness.
As she further explained,
"When you strip all of that away — all of that white noise and madness — you just
get to be with each other.
I think that was a real discovery for me.
How do you want to spend your time?
What matters?
I think that's what I learned a lot about during the last year."
Those are some inspiring words, and we hope that Blunt continues to spend her time meaningfully!
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