Thursday, April 19, 2012

Emily Blunt: From stammer to star: Emily Blunt began acting to help her speech and now she's a Hollywood icon (MIRROR)


One of four children of an actress mother and barrister father, Blunt was born and raised in Roehampton, South London, and began appearing in school plays at 12 because acting was good for her stammer.

“What helped me a lot was taking an acting class because I found it a very liberating experience to be someone else on stage and talk in a different voice that wasn’t my own,” she says.

“It was miraculous how I never stuttered onstage, and I know a lot of stutterers who are actors. Bruce Willis and James Earl Jones stutter offstage and never when they’re acting.”

An agent signed Emily at 16 and she went into the West End, appearing as Gwen Cavendish opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Peter Hall’s production of The Royal Family at Haymarket Theatre.

In 2002, she played the female lead in Romeo And Juliet at the Chichester Festival.

After her movie debut in My Summer Of Love (2004) and a Golden Globe for 2005 TV drama Gideon’s Daughter, she made her scene-stealing Hollywood debut in the role of the arrogant assistant to Meryl Streep’s dragon-lady fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).


She also showed up briefly, scantily-clothed, with Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson’s War, appeared in The Jane Austen Book Club, co-starred with Steve Carell in Dan In Real Life and picked up several critics’ group awards and a Golden Globe for her lead role as The Young Victoria.

Emily has been married for nearly two years to American actor John Krasinski, who co-stars in the US version of The Office, and they have bought a home in Los Angeles. She says, “I love LA. It’s what you make of it.”

She was previously with singer Michael Bublé for three years and sang on his album Call Me Irresponsible. He even wrote a love song, Everything, for her, but they broke up in 2008 and are no longer in touch.


READ MORE: http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/going-out/film/salmon-fishing-in-the-yemen-star-emily-799841


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