The Untold Truth Of Emily Blunt
Emily Blunt has fast become one of the most in-demand actresses in Hollywood with her lilting British accent and her charming on-screen presence. Whether it's sweeping viewers away in Mary Poppins Returns or unlocking the secrets of her past in The Girl on the Train, Blunt has proven that she has the acting chops to take on any role that comes her way. Not even pregnancy stopped her from killing it on the big screen!
In addition to being a gifted actress and talented singer, Blunt, by all accounts, is a refreshingly humble and down-to-earth person, easy to talk to, and effervescent in interviews. And, of course, her marriage to actor John Krasinski is total #RelationshipGoals, as the pair are sweet human beings and are pretty darn cute together.
But what else is there to know about Blunt that makes her such an interesting person? Why did she decide to get into acting, and who has she befriended as her career has progressed? Does she have any secret talents or quirks? This is the untold truth of Emily Blunt.
Emily Blunt has a famous brother-in-law
Emily Blunt's breakout role in film was that of the acerbic fashion assistant Emily in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada. Blunt clearly held her own in a star-studded cast that included Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Stanley Tucci — that's no small feat by any measure!
Interestingly enough, one of those famous cast members ended up becoming family for Blunt, something that was set in motion at Blunt's wedding to fellow actor John Krasinski. That's when she introduced Tucci to her sister Felicity, a literary agent, and sparks flew. "I match-made my sister with Stanley Tucci, who wormed his way into the family," she gushed in a video with Vogue magazine. "He is the best guy." That is such a great story!
Blunt's sister and Tucci have been together ever since, and, by all accounts, they appear to be very happy together. They even welcomed their second child in 2018, according to Entertainment Tonight.
Becoming a mother completely changed Emily Blunt's life
In 2014, Emily Blunt became a mother for the first time when she gave birth to her daughter Hazel. Then in 2016, she gave birth to her second child, Violet, something she and her husband, John Krasinski, are 100 percent thrilled about. "We are both massively hands-on, and we love it," she shared in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. "I'm so lucky with John." Having children also inspired Blunt to move to New York from Los Angeles so they could be in a city environment, where she appreciates being left alone from the public more often.
Becoming a mother has been a huge change for Blunt, who found herself with a whole new set of priorities now that she has children. "I was colossally unprepared for how life-changing it is," she continued. "Like all mothers, I think, 'What was I doing with my day before I had children?' It's so full-on and they need you so much; I do find myself in a perpetual state of distraction." Sounds about right!
What was Emily Blunt's most challenging role?
Of all of the versatile roles that Emily Blunt has played in films, one of them stands out as especially difficult for her. "The Girl on the Train role. Just full-blown alcoholism," she revealed in an interview with BuzzFeed. "I think that character is so different from me and how I live, and to get into that mindset — it was a very dark sort of mindset." That's beating out the intensity required for A Quiet Place, which tells you just how difficult it had to have been for Blunt to truly get into character.
That's not the only reason The Girl on the Train was difficult for Blunt, as she was dealing with another issue that made filming more difficult than usual. "I was also pregnant during the shoot," she continued. "So I'd say in general that whole experience was more challenging than most." That really does sound like a lot to deal with all at once.
Emily Blunt plays a musical instrument
If you've seen Into the Woods or Mary Poppins Returns, you know firsthand how lovely Emily Blunt's singing voice is. It's so good, in fact, that it made her husband cry the first time he heard her sing during a rehearsal for her role as Mary Poppins. "It was really wild. It was like finding out that your wife can levitate," he gushed an interview in Vanity Fair. "It was just like, 'When were you going to tell me this?'"
That's not the extent of Blunt's musical talent, either, as she played an instrument when she was younger. "I can play the cello," she revealed in an interview with W magazine. "Honestly I think I'm quite rubbish now. So I think I haven't played for ... years and I think it's because I'm scared that I'm not gonna be as good as I used to be."
To that end, Blunt has been toting a smaller instrument around instead, one she can share with friends. "I've vowed to the ukulele," she continued. "Because I think I can bring it with me on set and really everyone will enjoy it."
Emily Blunt struggled with stuttering growing up
You'd never know it watching her work, but Emily Blunt has dealt with a speech impediment since she was a child. Specifically, she struggles with stuttering, something that has caused her a significant amount of difficulty. "It runs in my family. I had an uncle, cousin, grandfather who stuttered," she confessed in an interview with People magazine. "It's nothing to do with anxiety. It's just a kind of brain-synapse thing that happens to people who are genetically predisposed to have it. The worst is having it at 12, 13." That would definitely make adolescence more difficult to deal with.
In order to help others, Blunt works with the American Institute for Stuttering to raise awareness about the condition. "It's a real problem for a lot of people," she continued. "It's not just kids. You have adults into their 40s and 50s who haven't been able to get the jobs that they deserve because you're sort of misrepresented by how you speak." She added that the organization is amazing to work with.
There's a special reason Emily Blunt became an actress
Interestingly enough, Emily Blunt didn't see herself becoming an actress from the very beginning, despite her talent for the profession. "I think this job found me," she explained in an interview with The Telegraph. "I certainly wasn't on the prowl for it."
However, all of that changed when one of her teachers recommended that she try acting as a way to cope with her stuttering. It was a therapeutic method of "removing me from me," she noted. "It was the most intuitive thing, and he was right," Blunt continued. "The only way I could speak fluently was to be someone else." It must have been a relief to find something that finally helped!
Blunt still didn't set her sights on a career as a professional actress, as she instead aimed to work with languages and be an interpreter. But as fate would have it, she was selected for a school production — a rock opera entitled Bliss — that wound up going to the Edinburgh Festival, according to Harper's Bazaar. And in the audience was an agent who snapped her up then and there.
Emily Blunt got her start in acting with another famous star
One of Emily Blunt's co-stars in Bliss also wound up becoming a famous actor: Adrian Rawlins, who's known for playing Harry Potter's father in the movies. In fact, it was his agent who signed Blunt and got her started in professional productions.
Blunt's first run as a professional was opposite Dame Judi Dench in a production of The Royal Family, which won her the Best Newcomer Award. Additionally, she became friends with Dench, who took her under her wing and mentored her. "She taught me everything about how to be gracious and graceful and not take it seriously," she mused in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. "She showed me how I wanted to be for the rest of my career. It just takes one person to toxify everything, and those are the movies you can't wait to see the back of."
After that, Blunt's career was off and running, as she made her film debut in My Summer of Love. She was soon cast in The Devil Wears Prada, and the rest is history.
John Krasinski is the apple of Emily Blunt's eye
The stars aligned one night in 2008 when Emily Blunt met fellow actor John Krasinski for the very first time. The pair were introduced by a mutual friend while they were dining out at a restaurant, and they both caught each other's eye. After that, their first date was at Krasinski's West Hollywood apartment, where they had pizza and shared something special and private. "It's so precious," Blunt gushed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "I don't want to talk about it." Aw!
Blunt and Krasinski, who became famous playing Jim Halpert on The Office, kept their careers separate for a long time, until A Quiet Place came along. "It was the only idea that had come our way that seemed bigger than our marriage," Blunt continued. "The narrative of our marriage was not going to overwhelm this movie and this amazing opportunity for him as a director, as a filmmaker, as a writer. I knew this was a big swing for him."
The film did well, too, garnering a SAG Award for Blunt and a host of award nominations, according to IMDb.
Emily Blunt and John Krasinski married at George Clooney's villa
Less than a year after they started dating, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski decided to take their relationship to the next level. By August of 2009, the couple was engaged to be married, according to an article in People magazine. Hey, when you know, you know.
The next year in 2010, Blunt and Krasinski tied the knot in a small and intimate ceremony at quite the posh location: George Clooney's Lake Como villa. Having that as an option was something that came as quite the surprise for the both of them. "John's known George for a long time, they did Leatherheads together, but I can't believe he offered us his house, actually," Blunt shared in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. "I'm still rather shocked about it. We thought he was joking the first couple of times he said it."
In the ceremony, Blunt wore a custom, cream-colored dress designed by Marchesa Bridal with embroidered detail, as reported by People. Krasinski put quite the rock on her finger, too!
Working on A Quiet Place was difficult for Emily Blunt
While Emily Blunt's role in The Girl on the Train was her most challenging, she also admitted that her part in A Quiet Place was super intense as well. "This was so personal to me," she shared in an interview with ScreenCrush. "I think it was a very personal character for me, and a sort of intimate experience doing this film because it was so close to home." She added that she comprehended her character's desire to make her children's lives happier and healthier, even though they live in a seriously brutal world.
Additionally, Blunt knows she can be a bit anxious about the same things that her character would be. "I'm someone who's probably worried, unnecessarily, all the time about my children," she continued. "So this character's experience would be the depth of hell for me. But I understood her plight and understood everything about her." Acting opposite her real-life husband had to have an impact, too!
Emily Blunt called her first red carpet look horrible
Emily Blunt walks the red carpet with the ease and confidence of someone who's done it over and over again, which makes sense as she'd been at it since 2006. But she recalls a time when she had no idea what she was doing, resulting in quite the overwhelming experience: her red carpet debut. "I think it must have been for My Summer of Love. I think I was far too tanned and I was wearing sort of a very bright yellow dress," she revealed in an interview with W magazine. "Of course, I didn't have hair and makeup at that time so I did it myself." That doesn't sound like it worked out well at all!
Blunt was accompanied by her sister, and the two of them look back on the whole debacle with amusement. "My sister came with me on the press tour and we always laugh at how sweaty we looked," she continued. "Horrible. Not my finest moment." Fortunately, Blunt has more than recovered from the experience, and she slays every time she's in front of the cameras.
You won't find Emily Blunt on social media
It's rare for celebrities to completely shun social media, but Emily Blunt doesn't have a use for any of it. "To be honest, I'm crap at all of it," she admitted in an interview in InStyle magazine. "I can barely keep up with email and texts, let alone send out a public account of what I'm doing all day." She did admit to having a private Instagram account where she follows Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, as well as her friends, but that's the extent of it.
It's not just about having the time for it either, as she feels that social media can show the world too much of a person. "My job is to persuade people that I'm somebody else and allow them to go on that journey with me," she continued. "If you share too much about yourself, people's interest becomes about you as opposed to the roles you have played." She added that she's nostalgic for the Golden Age of Hollywood, when actors had an air of mystique about them and Twitter was nowhere to be found.
Emily Blunt's father is a criminal defense attorney
When Emily Blunt started acting to deal with her stutter, that wasn't the only drama in her life. That's because of her father's profession, which takes a good deal of convincing people and performing for a crowd. "My dad, as a criminal defense lawyer, is in a perpetual state of pretending," she shared in an interview with The Guardian, explaining that he has to pretend his clients "didn't do what they did" and "usually, they did." She continued, "I've been there when the verdict comes in, and it is so dramatic and intense. An atmosphere you could cut with a knife." That would certainly have an impact!
While Blunt's father did have to defend sex offenders early in his career, that's something he prefers to avoid. "He hasn't done anything related to young girls, because he has three daughters," she continued. "He doesn't like working with rapists. So he prefers, if you can you use that word, murder, drugs and fraud."
Emily Blunt's first kiss was during spin the bottle
Although Emily Blunt is a glamorous Hollywood actress, her first kiss sounds as clunky and embarrassing as anyone else's. "It was playing spin the bottle," she recalled in an interview with W magazine. "I was thirteen and his name was Ashley Clark. It was my birthday party. I was so nervous." That sounds like an experience a lot of folks can identify with.
For Blunt, the moment was a lot for her to process, as she was young, inexperienced, and probably not ready for it. "I also didn't know what I was doing and it was a disarming thing to have my first sort of French kiss," she continued. "Just don't really know how to cope with it. It was just all rather overwhelming." She added that, after the kiss was over, she surreptitiously wiped her mouth off. That's about as awkward as it can get!