Emily Blunt Biography

Birth Name : Emily Olivia Leah Blunt 

Date of Birth : 23 February 1983, Roehampton, London, England, UK 

Height : 5' 7½" (1.71 m) 

Occupation : Actress

She was born Emily Olivia Leah Blunt on February 23, 1983, in Roehampton, South West London, England, the second of four children in the family of a teacher mother and barrister father. She received a rigorous education at Ibstock Place School, a co-ed private school at Roehampton. However, young Emily Blunt had a stammer, since she was a kid of 8. Her mother took her to relaxation classes, which did not do anything. She reached a turning point at 12, when a teacher cleverly asked her to play a character with a different voice and said, "I really believe in you". Blunt ended up using a northern accent, and it did the trick, her stammer disappeared.

Blunt made her foray into television with the U.K. series "Boudica" (2003), playing warrior queen Alex Kingston's daughter. The series was later broadcast on PBS in the United States. More television roles in period dramas followed, including playing Catherine Howard - fifth wife of Henry VIII - opposite Ray Winstone in "Henry VIII" (2003, Granada Television), and a spoiled socialite who meets an unpleasant fate in the Agatha Christie thriller, "Death on the Nile" (A&E, 2004). She made a big impression shortly thereafter in the independent feature "My Summer of Love" (2004), in which she was a manipulative young woman who becomes involved with a former prison inmate (Paddy Considine). The BAFTA-winning film shone the spotlight brightly onto Blunt, leading to the inevitable shift toward more substantial roles in larger productions. She played a vestal virgin with psychic abilities in the overripe historical miniseries "Empire" (ABC, 2005), and gained more positive reviews when she starred opposite Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill in the Australian film, "Irresistible" (2005), in which she played a young woman whom Sarandon believes is attempting to seduce her husband.

Blunt received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama. Blunt went on to co-star with Amy Adams in "Sunshine Cleaning" (2009), a comedy about a struggling family who launch a crime scene clean-up company, and played the good-hearted object of desire of a werewolf (Benecio Del Toro) in "The Wolfman" (2010). Continuing along that same vein, she was the object of affection for a love-struck assassin (Bill Nighy) in the British comedy, "Wild Target" (2010). She rounded out that year with the big budget adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels" (2010), which starred Jack Black in the role of Lemuel Gulliver.