LET’S BE BLUNT!
JUST A REGULAR MUM, EMILY PREFERS THE QUIET LIFE
Actress Emily likes the quiet life
She’s been called funny, clever, classy and smart. Just don’t call Emily Blunt famous!
Since becoming mum to her daughters Hazel, seven, and Violet, four, life has been practically perfect in every way for the Mary Poppins Returns
actress.
In addition to her obvious star status, her marriage to The Office actor John Krasinski has gone from strength to strength, she has continued to scoop acting gongs galore and, unlike many actresses before her, she isn’t dreading her looming 40th birthday as the beginning of the end of her career.
There’s no denying she’s enjoying her success. But despite her Hollywood A-list status, Emily has no intention of letting her kids know she’s a celebrity.
“Hazel came home the other day and goes, ‘Are you famous?’” tells Emily, who shot to fame in 2006 as neurotic fashion assistant Emily Charlton in The Devil Wears Prada.
“We’ve never said that word in our house. We don’t talk about it. Someone at school had clearly said it. “I was like, ‘Um… not really. I don’t think I am …’
“I don’t want my kids to feel any more important or special, or that there’s a glare on them,
any more than other kids. If they can remain oblivious for the longest time, I’d be thrilled!”
Life certainly changed forever for Emily after her success on The Devil Wears Prada and it changed dramatically again in 2008 when she met John, who is also a director, producer and screenwriter.
The pair met by accident at an LA restaurant. “My friend goes, ‘Oh, my God, that’s my friend John, and that was it,” recalls Emily. “He was sitting with our friend Justin Theroux, and he abandoned Justin and came over to us. He just stood there and made me laugh. I kind of knew right away.”
‘I don’t want my kids to feel any more important or special, or there’s a glare on them’
For their first date, John took Emily to a shooting range, later laughing, “I think I was so sure that I would never end up with her that I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna blow it right away and then that way you don’t feel bad.’”
Instead, the pair fell in love, marrying in 2010 at George Clooney’s estate in Lake Como, Italy, and four years later Hazel was born.
“I’m definitely more specific about what I do since becoming a mother,” tells Emily. “I want to work but, at the same time, I want to be at home. I used to find it so easy to go from job to job. It isn’t any more. Being a mother changes your focus.”
In 2017, Emily and John started planning a film project together – a path other celebrity couples have taken at the cost of their relationships.
Unlike Madonna and Guy Ritchie or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, however, their 2018 film A Quiet Place – in which they play a mum and dad trying to protect their children during an alien apocalypse – was a huge hit.
They enjoyed working together so much that Emily stars in and John has cowritten, produced and directed the sequel, which is currently screening in New Zealand cinemas.
Emily says playing the role of Evelyn, who has to protect her three children against horrific dangers, was traumatic.
And so were some of the action scenes. In one set-up, John needed her to take part in a stunt involving a spinning car.
She says it was “the most exhilarating, slightly terrifying event of my life. There was a moment when I was like, ‘Do you have loving, warm feelings towards me at all?’”
John has called the suspenseful tale of survival a love letter to his family, explaining, “Yes, the movie’s scary but to me the only reason it’s the type of scary that it is, is because you care about this family.”
There’s little doubt that “the Krunts” as Emily once joked they called themselves, have one of the happiest marriages in Hollywood.
“When I feel the support that I have from him, I feel invincible,” says Emily. “There’s someone behind you on your good days and someone in front of you on your bad days.”
And John is equally as doting, saying, “The best days of my life started when I met my wife... she’s one of the coolest people, she’s so talented, she’s beautiful and she’s certainly out of my league.”
Although based in the US, the family found themselves hunkering down in Emily’s native Britain during the Covid-19 lockdowns, with Emily finding she had plenty of time to cook her favourite curries.
“The kids are like, ‘Curry? Again?!’” laughs The Girl on the Train star, adding that she got through the pandemic by going on walks and trying to leave her phone at home so she could “actually notice the leaves and the trees and the sound of your footsteps”.
Not that Emily can afford to leave her phone off for long.
The Golden Globe winner might be turning 39 next February, but middle age is no longer the bogey it once was for women in showbiz, “because there are amazing roles for women who are not in their ingenue phase any more,” she enthuses.
Just don’t tell her kids.
“They don’t even like it when I put on make-up,” she laughs. “They just want me to be their mummy.”