The one actor Emily Blunt has always dreamed of working with: “I would love to”
It’s hard to imagine Emily Blunt ever encountering any real challenge in any acting roles.
That fact speaks for itself when you ask anybody what they immediately think of when someone says her name. There are so many to choose from, each an impeccable display of her sheer range and ease with which she slips into the mind of any character. For some, it’s her role as the tightly-wound Emily in The Devil Wears Prada. For others, it’s her maternal fighter Evelyn in A Quiet Place.
For others, it’s her troubled recovering alcoholic Rachel in The Girl on the Train. Whichever comes to mind, Blunt always pours nuance and intricacy into each and every role like nothing, truly nothing, phases her. As anyone in the acting world will know, however, that isn’t actually the case. In fact, Blunt encounters challenges just as much as her peers, mostly when the characters are so unlike who she is in real life that it feels almost impossible to perform.
This was the case with The Girl on the Train. A challenge for even the most seasoned of actors, the film required Blunt to tap somewhere deep – somewhere that didn’t even exist – just to get under the skin of the story itself. And on top of that, she was pregnant while shooting, making the whole thing feel even heavier. As she reflected later to Buzzfeed, “I think that character is so different from me and how I live, and to get into that mindset – it was a very dark sort of mindset. I was also pregnant during the shoot, so I’d say in general that whole experience was more challenging than most.”
As with most actors, however, Blunt finds working on any project far easier whenever she works alongside someone she trusts and respects. When it comes to directors, she may be a little biased, considering her husband has made quite a name for himself when it comes to flicks that stay with you longer after you’ve walked away.
But she also loves working with a handful of other directors – ones who have good communication and who make their actors feel immediately comfortable, like Christopher Nolan, Doug Liman, Denis Villeneuve, Rian Johnson, and more. On Nolan, she especially likes how he can calm any environment, even on sets like Oppenheimer, when there are so many major industry names to manage in the same space.
What especially impressed her was how he understands that, with actors, it’s often about trying out a few things before something sticks. She’s worked alongside many actors who also understand this kind of patient, many also major names she’d no doubt work with again. One that she hasn’t had the chance to work with, however, despite both appearing in the same film, is Gary Oldman.
When asked by Buzzfeed which actor she’d like to work with, she simply said his name – no elaboration, just: “I would like to work with Gary Oldman”. The statement itself says more than you might think, as Blunt has worked with the best of the best at this point, but hasn’t yet had the pleasure of sharing a scene with Oldman. It seems like the stars might align sometime soon, though – given both of them gravitate towards characters with a lot of range, and rarely restrict themselves to one genre.
