Golden Globes nominee Emily Blunt has opened up about her meteroic rise to fame and how she had made a backup plan should her acting career not have worked out
As one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, little could intimidate homegrown star Emily Blunt. She’s played everything from an action hero opposite Tom Cruise in the Edge of Tomorrow to a childhood hero taking on Julie Andrews’ legacy as Mary Poppins.
And tonight, Emily, 42, is set to cement her success at the Golden Globes in LA as one of six stars nominated in the best supporting actress category for her role in The Smashing Machine.
That’s pretty impressive for the London native who grew up as a self-confessed ‘shy’ child, battling with a stutter. Even more so, after being spotted in a school play in Edinburgh, she went on to be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood with a string of awards, including a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination.
Looking back at where it all started, she says: “I wanted to finish high school and then I said to myself, ‘Alright, I’m going to give it a go for a year, and if it doesn’t work out, I’m going to go to university.’ And quite quickly, I got cast in a play with the amazing Dame Judi Dench, and it was just the best launch into how fun this industry can be. She’s so graceful and free and warm and doesn’t take any of it seriously.”
But it wasn’t until she landed the role of stereotypical fashion magazine girl, Emily, in The Devil Wears Prada in 2006, opposite Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, that she hit the big time, winning a Golden Globe for the role.
Speaking about the experience that launched her career at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, she says: “When we were filming it, we were weeping with laughter every day. We thought we were making something funny. It was a joy bomb of an experience. It was amazing, but I didn’t know that it would become this thing that would catch fire in the way that it did.
“It sort of paved the way for people to see me more as a character actor rather than someone who should just be in a period drama, you know, being British, just subjected to wearing a bonnet or a crown at some point”
Refusing to be typecast is no doubt one of the secrets to Emily’s stratospheric success. Her career snowballed and she landed role after role across all genres of film, from thriller to action, romance to comedy.
But it seems her success was written in the stars. She grew up in London as one of four children; her mother was a former actress, and her barrister father helped nurture her love of cinema.
She says: “I think the industry can be hard on people… I had seen that [the acting world ] it had been hard on my mum. So I think I didn’t have this burning ambition for it; I was quite a shy kid. I had a really bad stutter, so I didn’t speak that readily. So to end up in a job where I would have to speak was sort of just completely out of reach for me.
“My father would always go to the video store and come back with the most inappropriate films that he wanted to watch, like ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘Jaws’. I remember seeing ‘Jaws’ at eight years old. I should have never have been allowed [to watch it]. It’s now my favourite film.”
It would appear that her family can’t escape the acting world. Emily – who previously dated singer Michael Buble – is married to fellow Hollywood star John Krasinski, who she met through a friend in 2008 and the couple shares two daughters together. Emily later introduced her former Devil Wears Prada co-star Stanley Tucci to her sister, Felicity and they married in 2012.
They say to never mix work and pleasure but Emily and her husband John broke that rule when they starred opposite each other in horror A Quiet Place, in 2018. So was it a good idea? Seeing as it made $350m and the pair are still happily married you’d guess so.
Emily says: “I was a little nervous to work with him. It was made for $17,000,000. We shot it in six weeks… and the reaction was crazy. I remember it was like a rock concert, the reaction to that film. It was this meteoric thing that none of us expected.”
Behind the red carpets and glamorous lifestyle, Emily is famed for her playful sense of humour and her genuine friendships with her former co-stars. She lives in New York with her family in the same building as Matt Damon and she jokes that they hang out together ‘in our slippers.”
She’s currently up for a gong in her role starring alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson ‘The Smashing Machine’ (directed by Oppenheimer’s Benny Safdie) a biopic of the MMA and UFC champion Mark Kerr, with Emily playing his wife, Dawn.
She says: “I love him so much. Dwayne is someone who, as you know, not only because of his colossal size, but just who he is, has never really been allowed to disappear – and he is unrecognisable in this…Benny said, ‘You are friends with Dwayne. Right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ Benny sent me the documentary and then I called Dwayne and I was like, ‘You’ve got to do this movie.”
But her A-list pals don’t end there. She’s stayed close with her Oppenheimer co-star Cillian Murphy. She says: “He’s a true friend. I hope we’re in each other’s lives forever. Oh my god, if anyone is not meant to be famous, it’s Cillian Murphy. He is like the last person who should be famous. He’s so crap at it. [laughs] He’s so bad. There’s sort of secret language and I feel that with Matt [Damon]. I feel that with Cillian. Definitely felt that with Dwayne because [working with them] it was just easy.
Whatever the outcome of tonight’s Golden Globes Emily is going nowhere. She’s already working with Steven Spielberg on Disclosure Day set for release in June.
She says: “I was so awestruck to even get the call, and then in the meeting he goes, ‘Would you like to know why you’re here?’ And I was, like, ‘Yes please.’ Because I was trying not to dork out and just talk to him about endless scenes from ‘Jaws’ that I’ve been obsessed with for years and, yeah, he’s really magical. I’m very happy.
“I don’t know about directing yet. I’m really trying to learn never to say never because I think I’m really enjoying producing stuff. I’m going to have to do a lot more sit-ups to be ready for ‘Edge of Tomorrow 2’. I don’t know if they [her abs] are quite what they were! [laughs] Two children later! But we’ll see. I’d like to find out how many crazy people I have inside of me.. I always thought Mary Poppins was my superhero. She’s magical, she flies, she’s perfect. I’m always open, of course, but I’ve never ventured into the comic book realm or superhero realm – but I’m always open.”
