Emily Blunt Says Acting Helped Her Overcome Her Childhood Stutter

She may be one of the biggest actress’s on the planet at the moment, but things weren’t always so easy for Emily Blunt. In fact, Emily recently revealed that she had to deal with a childhood stutter. A stutter that only went away thanks to acting.

The 35-year-old British actress sat down with Harper’s Bazaar UK to talk about how dealing with her stutter eventually opened the door for her to get into acting. “Because I couldn’t speak fluently, I watched and listened,” the Mary Poppins Returns star said. “I’d be on the Tube (subway), and I’d wonder about people and invent back stories for everyone. There’s always been a natural desire to walk in the shoes of others.”

“It started quite young, because it was the only tool I had to speak properly,” Emily recalled. “I was that kid, upstairs in my room, trying out stuff in the mirror. But I’d never tell anyone about it. It was always very private.” But Emily’s life did a 180 when a teacher asked her to be in a class play. The teacher suggested that she play characters in different voices like the ones she used, in hopes of helping her improve her speaking voice. And well, as they say, the rest is history.

“I didn’t have a desire to pursue acting and I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t fallen into it,” Emily added. “Crazy, isn’t it? But that’s probably why I ended up booking jobs, because I didn’t have any nerves. It was very charmed – rather embarrassingly, in fact.”

Things have turned out very well for Emily as she’s now getting roles left and right, even getting to play Mary Poppins — a role that even the film’s director, Rob Marshall, says was made for her. “Rob basically said, ‘If you don’t want to do this with us, we are going to find something else, because we won’t do it if you don’t want to,’” Emily once said.

Well we’re glad Emily successfully beat her childhood stutter and has gone on to play Mary Poppins. We’re also glad Julie Andrews did not turn down a million dollars to appear in the film. Oh wait…