Emily Blunt

• 1. Introduction

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  Emily Blunt is a British actress who earned an extraordinary compliment from Meryl Streep after the two worked together. Streep called her "the best young actress I've worked with in some time, perhaps ever". Praise like that can weigh heavily on a newcomer. Blunt's career since then raises several questions. Where did the nerve come from for a shy child who dreaded speaking aloud? Why does she keep choosing roles that other stars might avoid, from bleak thrillers to musicals? And how did a performer so often described as impossible to pigeonhole come to anchor both horror sequels and comedies?

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• 2. A Shy Child's Voices

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  Emily Olivia Laura Blunt was born on the 23rd of February 1983 in London, the second of four children. Her mother, Joanna Mackie, was a former actress and English teacher. She gave up acting to raise her children full time before Emily started school. Her father, Oliver Blunt KC, was a barrister.

  Blunt later described herself as a "shy and awkward" child. She began to stutter, a condition she called debilitating and "like an imposter living in your body". It was at its worst between the ages of seven and fourteen. Speaking intimidated her, so she spent her time watching people, inventing elaborate games for herself and playing the cello.

  A school teacher changed things by encouraging her to perform in class plays. Playing characters let her use voices unlike her own, and that allowed her to disconnect from herself and speak fluently. The discovery gave her the confidence to continue on the stage and to find her love of acting. She has said the stutter largely receded in adulthood, though it still occasionally emerges under stress.

  She attended Ibstock Place School, a private school in the London suburb of Roehampton. She then moved to Hurtwood House, a private sixth-form boarding school near the market town of Dorking in Surrey, known for its performing arts programme. After she appeared in a school play at the Edinburgh Festival, an agent discovered and signed her. Once her school exams were finished, she began auditioning.

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• 3. Stage and First Films

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  In November 2001, at the age of 18, Blunt made her professional debut in Peter Hall's West End production of The Royal Family. She played the granddaughter of the character played by Judi Dench. The critic Tom Keatinge called the production "a terrific night's entertainment". The Evening Standard named Blunt "Best Newcomer" for her performance.

  The following year she played Eugenie in Nicholas Wright's Vincent in Brixton at the National Theatre. She also played Juliet in Indhu Rubasingham's Romeo and Juliet at Chichester Festival Theatre. Her screen debut came in 2003 in the British television drama Boudica, about the ancient Celtic warrior-queen who fought the Romans. That same year she drew praise as the 16th-century Queen Catherine Howard in the two-part drama Henry VIII.

  In 2004 she made her cinema debut in Paweł Pawlikowski's independent British drama My Summer of Love. The story follows an infatuation between two young women from different socioeconomic backgrounds in the English countryside. Blunt played Tamsin. Much of the film was improvised, which she found an interesting challenge, and she described Pawlikowski's approach as "free spirited, collaborative and alive".

  She later said the experience was "such a foray into the great unknown" and that she "loved that feeling of terror and excitement". She has looked for it ever since. Newsweek's David Ansen wrote that she and co-star Press were "major discoveries". The film won Blunt the Evening Standard British Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer. It also brought a nomination for the British Independent Film Award in the same category.

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• 4. The Prada Breakthrough

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  Blunt's international breakthrough came in 2006, when two very different roles arrived in the same year. In the television film Gideon's Daughter she played the troubled only child of a New Labour spin doctor. In the comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada she played Emily Charlton, the senior assistant to fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, who was played by Meryl Streep. Clifford Pugh of the Houston Chronicle wrote that Blunt "steals nearly every scene she's in".

  Awards followed. Gideon's Daughter won her the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a series, miniseries or television film. The Devil Wears Prada earned her a Golden Globe nomination in the motion picture category, plus a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. At the 79th Academy Awards she and co-star Anne Hathaway co-presented the award for Best Costume Design. Both appeared as their characters from the film.

  In 2007 she appeared in four films: the horror film Wind Chill, the romantic drama The Jane Austen Book Club, the comedy-drama Dan in Real Life and the biographical comedy-drama Charlie Wilson's War. A year later came Sunshine Cleaning, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Blunt played Norah Lorkowski, an underachiever who starts a crime-scene clean-up business with her sister Rose, played by Amy Adams. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said the two actresses "get the job done". The Great Buck Howard, in which she played Valerie Brennan, premiered at the same festival.

  In 2009 she played Queen Victoria in The Young Victoria, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and written by Julian Fellowes. The film follows the young queen's early reign and her marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Blunt admitted she knew little about Victoria beforehand. After consulting her mother, she came to see the queen as "remarkable" and "a very 21st century sort of woman". The performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a drama and a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination. That year she also received the BAFTA Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year.

  The next year brought a stumble. In 2010 she took a supporting role in The Wolfman, opposite Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. It re-adapted a 1941 film and received mainly negative reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it one of the largest box-office failures of all time. A bigger what-if came the same year. Blunt was offered the role of Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, in Iron Man 2. But 20th Century Fox held an option on her, dating from her Devil Wears Prada contract, and used it to place her in the comedy Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black.

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• 5. Genre Hopping

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  In 2011, Blunt co-starred with Matt Damon in the thriller The Adjustment Bureau. She played a dancer "mysteriously kept apart" from a politician, and critics praised the chemistry between the two leads. She also starred in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, directed by Lasse Hallström. Her character is a financial adviser who recruits a fisheries expert to realise a sheikh's plan to bring fly fishing to the Yemeni desert. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a comedy or musical.

  That busy year also included a cameo as Miss Piggy's receptionist in Disney's The Muppets and a lead in the independent comedy-drama Your Sister's Sister. In November 2011 she was named ambassador for the new Yves Saint Laurent fragrance Opium.

  In 2012 she starred opposite Jason Segel in The Five-Year Engagement, directed by Nicholas Stoller. They played a couple whose relationship strains as their engagement keeps being extended. Then came Looper, a science fiction film directed by Rian Johnson. Blunt played Sara, a tough farm woman and single mother who falls in love with a time-traveller. It opened the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter credited her with revealing both the tough and the vulnerable sides of Sara.

  Edge of Tomorrow in 2014 adapted the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Blunt played Sergeant Rita Vrataski, a Special Forces warrior who trains a public relations officer to fight invading extraterrestrials. She trained for three months, covering weights, sprints, yoga, aerial wire work and gymnastics, and studied Krav Maga. The role won her the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie.

  That same year she played the Baker's Wife in Disney's film of Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, directed by Rob Marshall. She was pregnant throughout filming, while playing a character who is barren in the first act. The performance, including her singing, earned a second Golden Globe nomination.

  In Sicario in 2015, directed by Denis Villeneuve, she played Kate Macer, a principled FBI agent assigned to take down the leader of a powerful Mexican drug cartel. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Dan Jolin of Empire called her performance "nuanced". In 2016 the film The Huntsman: Winter's War was mostly dismissed by critics. Then she headlined The Girl on the Train, directed by Tate Taylor, as Rachel Watson, an alcoholic drawn into a missing person investigation. Reviews of the film were mixed, but Peter Travers wrote that she was "playing the hell out of" the part. It brought her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role and an Actor Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

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• 6. Silence and Sequels

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  After voice roles in the 2017 animated films My Little Pony: The Movie and Animal Crackers, Blunt returned to live action in A Quiet Place. It was directed by her husband, John Krasinski. The story follows a family tormented by monstrous creatures that hunt by sound. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods began writing the script in January 2016, from a concept they had conceived in college, and they wanted Blunt for the mother.

  When Krasinski rewrote the script, he did so with Blunt in mind. He did not ask her, because she had just had a child and was working on another film. He also worried she would either decline or accept only to support him. In his words: "I just thought if she does this, she has to come to it on her own." Blunt at first did not want the part. Then she read his draft on an aeroplane flight and felt she had to do it. The story "represented some of my deepest fears", chiefly the fear of not being able to protect her children. She also contributed to the pre-production stage.

  A Quiet Place was the opening night film at the 2018 South by Southwest festival and drew critical acclaim. Laura Prudom of IGN wrote that Blunt was "put through the wringer" in ways that would seem almost farcical without her conviction. The role won her the Actor Award for Best Supporting Actress.

  Later in 2018 she played the title character in Rob Marshall's Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the 1964 film, taking over the part from Julie Andrews. Owen Gleiberman of Variety found her "practically perfect in every way". The film brought an Actor Award nomination and her sixth Golden Globe nomination.

  The pandemic year of 2020 was more mixed. Blunt guest-starred in her husband's internet series Some Good News on YouTube. She also starred in the romantic drama Wild Mountain Thyme, adapted from John Patrick Shanley's play Outside Mullingar. It required an Irish accent, and neither the film nor her accent was well received. Forbes that year ranked her the sixth highest-paid actress in the world.

  A Quiet Place Part II arrived in 2021 after a delay of a year. It became one of the first major Hollywood films released in cinemas since the pandemic began, and it was another commercial success. Later that year she starred with Dwayne Johnson in Jungle Cruise, based on the amusement ride and released in cinemas and on Disney+ Premier Access at the same time. Reviews were poor. In 2022 she played an avenging mother in Hugo Blick's western miniseries The English. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian described her as "a woman made brave and undauntable by resolve", and the role earned another Actor Award nomination.

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• 7. Oppenheimer and Beyond

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  In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer in 2023, Cillian Murphy played J. Robert Oppenheimer and Blunt played his wife, Katherine. Katherine Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party USA. Blunt took a pay cut to work on the film. Nolan said that while writing the script he thought about "running away" from the character because she was "terrifying". Blunt humanised her. He praised her for showing "no vanity, no fear of humiliation, no wanting to control the way she would appear".

  Some critics faulted the film's writing for its female characters, but Blunt was singled out for elevating the limited material she had. Dan Jolin of Empire wrote that she "busts out of the supportive/suffering wife archetype". He pointed to an intense verbal duel with the bullish lawyer Roger Robb as one of the film's most rousing scenes. She received nominations for the Golden Globe, the Actor Award and the BAFTA. She also received her first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. Oppenheimer became the highest-grossing film of her career. Her other release that year, the Netflix crime drama Pain Hustlers with Chris Evans, received poor reviews.

  The Fall Guy in 2024, an action comedy directed by David Leitch, paired her with Ryan Gosling. For her role as a filmmaker she drew inspiration from Greta Gerwig. The film did not perform well commercially. She then voiced Unicorn in Krasinski's live-action animated fantasy IF. Next came Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine, in which Dwayne Johnson plays the MMA wrestler Mark Kerr. Blunt played Kerr's girlfriend, Dawn Staples, and the film received positive reviews and a Golden Globe nomination for her.

  On the 30th of April 2026, Blunt received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a joint ceremony with Stanley Tucci. The next day, the 1st of May 2026, The Devil Wears Prada 2 was released with Blunt reprising Emily Charlton. Its global opening weekend earned $233.6 million, the biggest box office debut of her career. She was also set to star in Steven Spielberg's science fiction film Disclosure Day, with Josh O'Connor, scheduled for release on the 12th of June 2026.

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• 8. Critics, Causes, Family

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  Journalists often return to one word about Blunt: versatility. The Guardian observed that she is not pigeonholed and said she "specialises in a sort of calculated understatement". The paper praised her facility for accents. The New York Times noted a "taste for the offbeat" and a "fetching lack of vanity" when she plays disagreeable women. Catherine Shoard of The Guardian named her "the biggest British female movie star of her generation", comparing her with Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Rachel Weisz and Kate Winslet. Vanity Fair described "a movie star with character-actor range".

  Off screen, Blunt has worked with the American Institute for Stuttering since 2006, helping children overcome stuttering through educational resources and raising awareness of the condition. She sits on the Institute's board of directors. Each year she hosts a gala that raises money for speech therapy scholarships for children and adults. She also promotes and raises funds for the Malala Fund, which advocates for girls' education and was co-founded by Malala Yousafzai. She works as well with Family Reach, which helps financially support families affected by cancer.

  Her personal life has been closely tied to the film world. From 2005 to 2008 she was in a relationship with the Canadian singer Michael Bublé. In November 2008 she began dating the American actor John Krasinski, after a mutual friend introduced them. They became engaged in August 2009 and married in Como, Italy, in July 2010. They have two daughters, born in 2014 and 2016.

  In 2012 Blunt became the sister-in-law of the actor Stanley Tucci, when he married her sister Felicity. In 2015 she became an American citizen through naturalisation, making her a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. Tucci would later share her Walk of Fame ceremony.

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