Contributor: Michele Manelis

London-born actress Emily Blunt will celebrate her 40th birthday on February 23. Besides having remained remarkably unaffected throughout her award-winning professional life, Blunt deserves credit for steering one of Hollywood’s most diverse and exciting careers. She has proven there is nothing she can’t do, having nailed a beleaguered assistant to a nightmare fashion magazine mogul in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Queen Victoria in The Young Victoria (2009), a kickass FBI agent in Sicario (2015), and a derailed alcoholic in The Girl on the Train (2016), before adding singing and dancing to her resumé, playing the Baker’s Wife in 2014’s Into The Woods and beloved literary figure Mary Poppins in Mary Poppins Returns (2018).  She starred in the blockbuster horror franchise, A Quiet Place (2018 and 2020), the brainchild of her husband John Krasinski, and followed it up playing opposite The Rock in the comedy adventure flick Jungle Cruise in 2021.  She is currently starring in the miniseries The English, and will next star in the eagerly anticipated biographical film by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer, about scientist Robert Oppenheimer in which Blunt will portray the scientist’s wife, Katherine.
Blunt grew up the second of four children. Her father is a renowned barrister, and her mother a teacher and former stage actress. (Blunt’s older sister, Felicity, is married to Stanley Tucci: the couple met at Emily and John Krasinski’s wedding at George Clooney’s villa on Italy’s Lake Como in 2010.) Blunt and Krasinski are raising their two daughters in New York.
The recipient of numerous accolades, in 2007 she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television for Gideon’s Daughter.

She has been nominated five additional times: for Best Supporting Actress for The Devil Wears Prada, Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for The Young Victoria, and Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Into the Woods, and Mary Poppins Returns.
When listening to Blunt, who is eloquent and articulate, it’s difficult to reconcile her fluent speech with the fact that she was a stutterer during her formative years. After  her parents having taken her for years to speech and relaxation coaches, what finally worked for Blunt was when she began acting, which was when the stuttering stopped. Admirably, she uses her celebrity to help those less fortunate. She now sits on the board of the American Institute for Stuttering.
She said during an interview with the HFPA to promote Wild Mountain Thyme in December 2020,“I feel like I have a real sense of purpose with this foundation because it’s so personal to me, and I understand exactly the anguish and the hardship of what these kids are going through and what these adults are going through. There’s a lot of misinformation about stuttering and I think that is my job to enlighten people on what it’s about; that it’s not anxiety-ridden, it’s not that you have a mental disability, it is that you have a nervous disposition. It’s neurological, it’s hereditary, it’s genetic and it’s nobody’s fault.”
She paused, and continued,“And the kids can do nothing about it, and so, of course, I have so much empathy, so much sympathy for them because it’s also the kind of disability where because you cannot speak, you can’t even explain it to people. You know something, what I love is that I’ve never met a mean stutterer. Once you’ve been humiliated, you’ll never do it to anybody else. Ever.”