Emily Blunt turns 40: from overcoming stuttering to succeeding in Hollywood

“I refuse to be sick. I’m wearing a Valentino, for God’s sake!” says a overwhelmed Emily after leaving a tense meeting. Her notorious cold would not allow her to go to an important party that night. But what bothered her the most was feeling like this, while she was wearing a designer piece. In one of the nicest scenes of “The Devil Wears Fashion”, Emily Blunt He gives his character a spark and charisma that enrich this and each of his appearances on the screen. Although Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are always singled out, there is no doubt that Emily, then 23, took advantage of one of her first big breaks in film. So much so that Entertainment Weekly named her Best Female Scene-Stealer, literally, “Best Female Scene Stealer.” Although Blunt doesn’t like to see his movies again because he literally says “destroy them”, he chose this scene as his favorite in one of the movies that put it on the showcase of the world public. Her huge light blue eyes, her deep voice, her great sense of humor and, of course, a waterproof talent, capable of adapting to different film genres, have made this British actress born on February 23, 1983 one of the most highlights of today’s Hollywood.

The 2007 Oscar was already a sign that the industry would give her the prominence that her great talent as an actress deserves. At the ceremony that night, she appeared with her co-star, Anne Hathaway, to present the Best Costume Design Award, remembering her characters live and worldwide in “The Devil Wears Fashion.” ”. “Why don’t you have her cappuccino? Didn’t you give her her cappuccino? ”, a “nervous” Hathaway asks Blunt when she sees Meryl Streep, her boss in the film, in the audience. “You’re a great actress,” Blunt tells Streep, while she looks at her with the suspicious look typical of Miranda Priestly, the iconic fashion editor she played in that well-remembered film. Everything, of course, was a nice sketch to animate the ceremony that year.

Emily Blunt could already say that she shared scenes with Meryl Streep and presented an Oscar award. By the way, today, Hathaway is one of her best friends, along with Amy Adams. Besides Streep herself, her other favorite actresses are Emma Thompson, Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. By now, it could be said that she has taken small ingredients from all four to find her own record. After all, what other actress of her generation could have gone from The Devil Wears Fashion to Mary Poppins or The Quiet Place so effortlessly?

the stuttering girl

“A stutterer fell in love with me / I was a random person and she was an actress / From the stuttering cinema”, said a well-remembered song from Civic Instruction, widely listened to in the 80s, as a joke. In the case of Emily Blunt, let’s say that reality was stranger than fiction. Chastened by a serious childhood stuttering problem, dreams of becoming an actress seemed far away. “For me the performance was a kind of invitation to speak fluently for the first time,” the actress confessed last year at Freeing Voices, Changing Lives Gala 2022, a charity event organized by the American Institute for Stuttering in New York of which she was a hostess. It was in her childhood when, thanks to her interpretation of funny voices, sounds like the trill of a bird or various foreign accents, moved by her innate histrionics, she Blunt would feel that for the first time she could speak fluently. . “I wouldn’t say that stuttering is the reason why I ventured into acting, but it was quite shocking the first time I was able to speak in a silly voice or an accent pretending to be someone else,” the actress said in an interview with the magazine. People.

For this reason, until today, he gives his testimony to make visible a problem that can affect the social relations of the millions of people affected in the world and for whose treatment he also enthusiastically raises funds. “Stutterers are my heroes… that’s why I’m here,” Blunt said that night. “If you can’t express yourself, you can’t be yourself. And there is something very moving about freeing people from the clutches of a speech impediment, because it is like a kind of impostor that lives in your body, “the actress also assured People who has had the courage to share with her followers who, even today, in situations of great stress, stutters. In fact, he has said that Colin Firth’s stutter in “The King’s Speech” literally describes how she spoke as a child.

Of course, the condition that affected her at that time was overshadowed by her conditions for acting. Her grandfather, her uncle and a cousin of hers are also stutterers, which she maintains is a hereditary condition. “I think it’s very often a disability that people are bullied because it makes them laugh at it, so I feel like to raise awareness about what’s really going on, it’s nice to have this place that this amazing organization offers. . For me it is very important to be here, ”Blunt said at the Freeing Voices gala, making clear her commitment. Emily doesn’t forget where she comes from, nor where she’s going.

supercalifragilistic

Since her beginnings in the theater, at the beginning of this century, Emily garnered positive reviews. It was not only the presence of a beautiful woman that she stood out on stage, but the character that she gave to her characters. In 2003, she made her screen debut with two period telefilms, such as The Queen of War and Henry VIII, in which she played Catherine Howard, one of the wives of the controversial British monarch. In 2004 she had one of the main characters in My Summer of Love by Pavel Pawlikowski (director of the award-winning Cold War), which earned her a Bafta nomination for Best New Actress. Two years later she was already doing The Devil Wears Fashion.

The following year, just a brief appearance as a sexy young woman who becomes intimate with Tom Hanks in Charie Wilson’s War, was enough to wow – even more – the audience, displaying a captivating edge. Then came, one after another, the roles that clearly speak to us of an actress looking for new challenges, despite her difficulties, and that the last thing she wants is to be typecast. The period drama (Queen Victoria, 2009); terror (The Wolf Man, 2010); pure entertainment (Gulliver’s Travels, 2010); the romantic comedy (Salmon Fishing in Yemen, 2011); science fiction (Looper, 2012 or At the edge of tomorrow, 2014); the adventure (Into the Woods, 2014 or The Snow White Chronicles, 2016); police action (Sicario, 2015); the mystery (The girl on the train, 2016); fantasy (Mary Poppins Returns, 2018) or post-apocalyptic horror (A Quiet Place 1 and 2, 2018 and 2020, respectively).

His performance in Mary Poppins was particularly commented because, despite the fact that they do not use Supercalifragilístico expialidoso, one of the most representative themes, they do rescue the endearing character of the original film. She was also nominated for a Bafta for The Girl on the Train, an MTV Award nominee for The Devil Wears Fashion and A Quiet Place, for which she also won the Screen Actors Guild. She also won the Golden Globe for the television series Gedeon’s Daughter (2005) and the Critics Choice Award for Edge of Tomorrow.

Along the way, she turned down a character that made Scarlett Johansson a superhero movie icon: Black Widow, in Iron Man 2. She likes Marvel, but she’s not sure if that world is for her. “It would have been amazing, but I don’t know if superheroes are for me. They’re out in the world, I think they’re exhausted, we’re inundated, and not just in the movies, but also in the TV shows.”

Despite that, he actually couldn’t appear in the MCU because he had an engagement for Gulliver’s Travels. Shortly before, in 2007, her then-boyfriend, Michael Bublé, dedicated the song Everything to her: You’re a falling star, you’re the get away car/ You’re the line in the sand when I go too far/ You’re the swimming pool, on an August day/ And you’re the perfect thing to say (You’re a shooting star, you’re the getaway car/ You’re the line in the sand when I go too far/ You’re the pool, on an August day/ And you’re the perfect thing to say), he sang to her, in love. The romance, however, did not prosper. Bublé has been married, since 2011, to the Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato –remembered by Rebelde Way- and Blunt did the same in 2010 with John Krasinsky, his co-star and director of Un lugar en silencio, with whom he has two young children. His sister is Felicity Blunt, a well-known literary agent who is married to another actor who appeared in The Devil Wears Fashion: her friend Stanley Tucci.

In 2021 Jungle Cruise premiered, another foray into adventure cinema, by the Catalan director Jaume Collet-Serra, the same as The Orphan. In 2022 we could see her in The English, a Prime Video miniseries in which she played a woman seeking revenge. Her performance earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination this year.

This 2023 will also be part of the cast of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s new project, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a key scientist in the development of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. He will share the bill here with other luxury names: Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Kenneth Brannagh, Gary Oldman or Casey Affleck.

Curiously, Blunt has been in three films about characters trying to change the future: Hidden Fate (2011), Looper (2012) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), although few imagine that he actually wants to change what life has thrown at him. . She has a phobia of heights, cockroaches and gloves, she knows how to play the violin and is a good singer. She is smart, talented, and has a great sense of humor. At this point, one can only wonder, what is Emily Blunt doing wrong?

“I have cunning eyes. When she was in school, they always said: ‘Emily can never be Head Girl because you never know what she’s thinking’, she has recounted of her youth. The same can be said for many of her enigmatic characters. Those that she learned to interpret by looking at the world from the lonely universe of which she could not and did not want to speak. Today, there is no “quiet place” for her.