The actor Emily Blunt called a rare breed: “He doesn’t have a false note in his repertoire”
The continued rise of Emily Blunt as a Hollywood megastar has been a joy to watch. From struggling with a childhood stammer to finding early success in the theatre and on TV to starring in some of the biggest films of a generation, Blunt has taken it all in her stride and, if anything, seems like she’s only going to get bigger from here on out.
The Englishwoman’s ludicrous success has afforded her the opportunity to work with some of the biggest names around. She starred alongside Jack Black and Billy Connolly in Gulliver’s Travels, the latter of whom helped her get over her imposter syndrome. In her role as the titular scientist’s wife in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, for which she was nominated for her first Oscar, she hobnobbed with the likes of Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, and more. She’s set to play a major role in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming project as well.
In an interview with Movieline, she was asked about another of her co-stars, Benicio del Toro, and his then-upcoming role in Steven Soderbergh’s Che. “I haven’t seen it yet,” she admitted. “Benicio sent me an email saying, ‘There’s a screening of the long movieeeee. You wanna come see it?’ I was like, ‘I can’t, buddy.’” This is in reference to the mammoth 267-minute runtime of the film, which was so large that some distributors chose to split it into two. Even though she hadn’t seen del Toro’s latest flick, she was still highly complimentary of him.
“I hear he’s stunning in it, and I have every faith that he is,” she continued. “He’s a rare breed, Benicio. He sees the world in a different light. He’s very brave as an actor, and he doesn’t have a false note in his repertoire.” Let’s hope she truly meant what she said, and she wasn’t just trying to make up for the fact that she hadn’t seen his new movie.
This interview was conducted in 2009, ahead of the release of Blunt and del Toro’s first joint venture, The Wolfman. A modern retelling of the classic Universal horror of the same name, the film stars del Toro as a man who, upon learning of his brother’s savage death at the hands of an unknown beast, returns home to England and his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins). Blunt plays a woman called Gwen, the murdered man’s fiancée. She is drawn into the story when del Toro’s character, Lawrence, begins to transform into a werewolf.
Whilst The Wolfman turned out to be a bit of a bust, the two pals would reunite five years later for something much, much better. Blunt and del Toro both appear in Denis Villeneuve’s masterful narcotics thriller Sicario; Blunt as a strong-willed FBI agent; del Toro as a specially trained assassin. Though not her first ‘serious’ role, Blunt received some of the best reviews of her career for her work on this occasionally troubling production.
As for del Toro, he’s gearing up for quite the 2025. He is star to appear in the new movies from both Wes Anderson (The Phonecian Scheme) and Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), as well as All-Star Weekend, the directorial debut of Jamie Foxx. Clearly Blunt isn’t the only one who thinks he’s great.
