23:39 GMT, 12 January 2013
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00:36 GMT, 13 January 2013
Poised: Hollywood actress Emily Blunt is aiming for a Golden Globe tonight
It is her moment in the full glare of the limelight. And not only does she know it, but Emily Blunt believes – with much justification – that she deserves it.
Tonight, when she sashays down the red carpet at the 70th Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, she will do so with all the verve and panache of an accomplished actress. For Emily has the confidence of a woman who knows she has finally found her way.
She is hotly tipped to win the award for Best Actress In A Musical Or Comedy for her role in Salmon Fishing In The Yemen – the romantic comedy about a sheik who determines to bring fly-fishing to his Arab homeland.
Emily is vying with some of the hottest names in the business. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Meryl Streep are nominated too.
But if the tipsters are to be believed, it is the British girl America has taken to its heart who will come home clutching the Globe, thus guaranteeing her status as a bona fide Hollywood star.
For Emily – on the brink of 30 and happily married to John Krasinski, star of the US version of The Office – the nomination is confirmation that she has conquered her former fears of failure and emerged triumphant.
It is something that, 13 years ago, she thought might never happen.
Born in Roehampton, South-West London, Emily is the daughter of highly successful barrister Oliver Blunt and Joanna, a teacher and former actress.
Emily lived her early life in the shadow of her older sister Felicity and, as a youngster, developed a stutter. She overcame it in her teens, but still had trouble finding her way.
Hers was an intellectual and high-achieving family and at 16 she was desperate to follow her sister, who is 18 months older, to the sixth form at Westminster School.
But it wasn’t to be. ‘She’s very close to me,’ says Emily, ‘and I wanted to be like her. But I wasn’t offered a place and I remember thinking, “My life is over.” I recall reeling around the kitchen and thinking, “I’m a failure, I didn’t get into that school.” It was so awful and upsetting.’
Disappointed at her failure to emulate Felicity’s academic prowess, Emily began to lose her way.
‘I was a chronic drifter when I was a teenager,’ she admits. ‘I changed my mind several times about what I wanted to do. For a long time, I was interested in working as a translator at the United Nations. As I had trouble speaking, I thought that was a very good goal for me to try to achieve. And I thought it would be a very intelligent occupation.’
Emily didn’t realise it at the time, but failing to get into Westminster School would be instrumental in her desire to find that elusive role in which she could achieve.
‘I look back with gratitude to a lot of stuff that’s happened,’ she says. ‘It seemed so awful and so upsetting – but I wound up attending my second-choice sixth form, Hurtwood House in Surrey, where an agent discovered me. When I look back to those times, I think to myself, “Thank God I didn’t get into Westminster School because if I had gone there, I never would have got into drama. I’d never be here.’’ So I guess it all worked out. That’s pretty trippy to me.’
Sister act: Emily (left) with Felicity. She lived her early life in the shadow of her older sister who was more academic
While she was at Hurtwood House, the head of the drama department staged a show and Emily was spotted by an agent who fixed an audition with the theatre director Sir Peter Hall. She was just 18 but he was so impressed with her that he immediately added her to the cast of his West End play The Royal Family as Judi Dench’s granddaughter.
On the strength of that performance, Emily was hired by director Richard Eyre for his award-winning play Vincent In Brixton at the National Theatre.
She hasn’t stopped working since. Her first film success was in the 2004 art-house movie My Summer Of Love, in which she played a haughty Sloane who falls into a passionate friendship with a Yorkshire teenager. Two years later, she played Meryl Streep’s assistant in The Devil Wears Prada, giving a performance that one critic described as ‘the breakout turn of the year’.
Then, in 2007, she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress as Bill Nighy’s daughter in Stephen Poliakoff’s TV drama Gideon’s Daughter. She has since starred alongside Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau and Bruce Willis in Looper. She is now in London for five months filming with Tom Cruise for the action movie All You Need Is Kill.
Given her relative youth, it would be easy for such success to turn her head. Instead, she has always had a remarkable self-assurance, due in no small part to a family where they were all brought up to be confident.
Felicity trained as a barrister before becoming a literary agent, and is now married to Hunger Games star Stanley Tucci. Younger sister Suzanna wants to be a vet, while her brother Sebastian is also an actor.
Hooked: Emily in Salmon Fishing alongside co-star Ewan McGregor. She is hotly tipped to win an award for her role in the film
Oddly, before being talent-spotted at school, Emily never had any grand ambitions to be an actress. In fact, according to her old schoolfriend Camilla Al Fayed, she wanted to become a singer. In the event, the closest she would come to a pop star would be a three-year relationship with Canadian singer Michael Buble.
As a result she wears her fame lightly, saying: ‘Yeah, even though it can creep up on you sometimes, I find it quite easy to disengage from it. The job is what I do, it’s not who I am. It never has been, so I feel like I do have somewhat of a jewelled existence in some way.
‘I’ve always managed to see acting as a magical job that I’m very lucky to do. Some of the bull**** you have to develop a thick skin for, so that it bounces off you, you know.
‘It’s quite hard to upset me or throw me off or shock me. I don’t tend to over-emotionalise things. That’s the rational side. But I am also a really hopeful person and I enjoy dreaming big. I am in a profession where it’s all about your gut and your imagination. Most actors are dreamers in some way.
‘But you have to dream something and put it into action. People can dream and sit there in their living room and never get out and do it.’
While the Americans may have fallen in love with her, they don’t always get her British sense of humour.
Hollywood wife: Emily and her husband John, star of the US office
She says: ‘Our house was full of humour with everyone putting on a little show or being dramatic or entertaining. I like to believe that I can be witty on occasion, although sometimes you can say something a little too sharp where the irony doesn’t quite come through and you have to backtrack and repair the situation.’
She and Krasinski – who plays the Martin Freeman role in the US Office – lead a low-key life by Hollywood standards. They can often be found hiking in Santa Monica’s mountains with their two rescue dogs.
They enjoy quiet dinners at the Santa Monica restaurant Giorgio Baldi, but more often than not prefer to eat at home with friends.
Emily once said of her husband: ‘John’s a wonderful man and we are just so happy to have found each other. It’s also a great comfort to be with someone who is good-natured and very pleasant to be around. He won’t let me stay in a dark mood very long.’
She plays the Hollywood game but admits it has its downsides. ‘It’s not celebrity per se,’ she says. ‘But the fact is that as an actress you’re always expected to look perfect, wear the latest design and look your best.
‘Sometimes you want to wear a T-shirt and jeans when you go to the grocery store or to a cafe and read a book or magazine.
‘I also feel bad for women in their late 30s or 40s because there’s so much pressure in this business to look young that women are not supposed to age. It’s terrifying to think that when I’m 40, a lot of roles will be closed to me because of that kind of age bias.
‘I don’t want to think that I have to maintain eternal youth.’
And, in truth, she is refreshingly old-fashioned in many ways. ‘I’m like a dinosaur, I’m so not a technological person,’ she says. ‘What irritates and disappoints me … is seeing people on a romantic dinner on their phones. I’m just like, “How sad.” I find it really sad.
‘I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert recently in Madison Square Garden in New York – and all he must see is a sea of machines, a sea of iPhones and not faces.
‘And that’s what I see. If fans come and watch you shoot a movie, you don’t see faces any more – you see that. It’s strange, it’s like a strange thing . . . I think there’s something to be said about putting your phone down.’
Particularly as she is fast approaching the kind of stardom where she is constantly going to be snapped as she walks down the street.