A Quiet Place star Emily Blunt has opened up about her lifelong stutter—and how acting has helped her with it.
Speaking to PEOPLE, Blunt revealed she had lived with a stutter since she was a young girl.
“People tease, it’s very bullied still. That was the worst, having it at like 12, 13—you’re like, come on, man! It’s just so weird,” she told the publication.
Blunt learnt that using “a lot of funny voices and funny accents” came easily to her and helped her speak more fluently.
“I had this fantastic teacher when I was 12, and he asked me to be in the class play,” she recounted. “He was like, ‘Well, I think you should do it.’ And this is kind of remarkable for someone who’s not a stutterer, that he had this instinct. It was so special.
“He said, ‘I think you are funny, and you should do it. Have you ever thought about doing it in a different voice? ‘Cause I’ve heard you doing your impersonations of people. Why don’t you do it in a silly voice?’ And so I did the play in a stupid voice and spoke fluently.”
Thank God for Blunt’s very wise teacher—otherwise, we might have never been blessed with Blunt’s incredible performances in The Devil Wears Prada, Sicario and The Girl on the Train.
The actress added that the stutter comes back every now and again when she’s tired or while pregnant.
“It runs in my family. I had an uncle, cousin, grandfather who stuttered. It’s nothing to do with anxiety,” Blunt explained. “It’s just a kind of brain-synapse thing that happens to people who are genetically predisposed to have it.”
