How Emily Blunt Overcame Her Stutter

Emily Blunt is objectively one of the most talented and versatile actors in Hollywood. She rose to fame as the snarky Emily Charlton in 2006's "The Devil Wears Prada" and cemented her place in the industry when she starred alongside Tom Cruise in "Edge of Tomorrow," playing a soldier who can defeat aliens in combat even with her eyes closed. In 2016, she earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role when she played a recovering alcoholic in "The Girl on the Train." And, of course, her role in "A Quiet Place" as a survivalist mother earned her praises from audiences and critics alike.

It's clear that Blunt was born to be a star, but according to the actor, she had a condition during her childhood that barred her from talking normally, let alone acting. In an interview with Marie Claire, the actor revealed that she once struggled with stuttering. "My stutter really started to take hold around six or seven and then kind of got progressively more challenging for me, and as I reached about 11 or 12, it was pretty ingrained," she said.

In a separate interview with NPR, Blunt said that she even had a hard time saying her own name. "A stutter can be like a straitjacket," she said. "I struggled with vowels, so 'Emily' was like the depths of hell for me." But, ultimately, acting helped Blunt turn her life around.

Emily Blunt's stutter — not her personality nor her talents — dominated her early years. "It wasn't the whole part of me; it was just a part of who I was," she shared with Marie Claire. "There were certain people who liked to define me by that. That was tough. I decided not to really spend time with those people. I've probably only now come to realize that everybody has something growing up. That just happened to be my thing."

Fortunately, she had a teacher who encouraged her to act. He suggested that she try putting on a different accent for a school play, which helped stop the stutter. "That was a very liberating thing for me as a kid. Suddenly, I had a fluency. The removal of yourself from yourself, in some ways, was freeing. I agreed to it, and I did speak completely fluently," Blunt noted. "That was the beginning of realizing that I had a handle on it, and maybe it could be temporary, and maybe I could grow past this."

And grow past it she did. While she admitted that acting was never part of her plans, she said that she eventually developed a passion for it. "It was just something I thought I'd try, and then I've fallen madly in love with it. I can't imagine doing anything else now. I don't know what I would do."

When asked whether she still considers herself a stutterer, Emily Blunt only had one response: "Once a stutterer, I feel, always a stutterer," she told Marie Claire. And now that she has learned to manage her condition, she's helping others do the same. Per People, the "A Quiet Place" actor is involved with the American Institute for Stuttering in an effort to make a difference in the lives of people who are experiencing what she went through.

"Well, I think of all the causes, my work with the stuttering community is the one that pierces my heart probably most profoundly because of my own personal experience with it," Blunt explained. "To be able to help and to be able to offer up any advice or assistance or emboldenment that I can, it just is the greatest pleasure for me because it's a very misunderstood, misrepresented disability."

Blunt also said that she's helping kids love and accept that their stutter is only a small part of who they are as people. "You've got to fall in love with the fact that you've got a stutter to accept it," she added. "But it's not all of you. Everyone's got something — and this is just your thing."