Being Blunt

Emily Blunt is jolly busy. This year, she’s in three movies – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, with Ewan McGregor; The Five-Year Engagement, with Jason Segel; and the offbeat My Sister’s Sister. Her fans, I tell her, must be really excited.

Emily seems unsure: ‘D’you think so?’ she says, wrinkling her nose. ‘It might be just incredibly boring. I can imagine people’s faces when the next film comes out. “Ugh, not her again!”’

We are having coffee in the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Emily and I. Emily looks every inch the movie star in a white pencil skirt and a vintage top. But as it turns out, she isn’t a diva at all. She spends much of the interview sending herself up — not the usual form in filmland.

Which isn’t to suggest that she’s the shy, retiring type. Her self-confidence as an actress was apparent from the start. She burst on to British screens in 2004, all of 21 and smouldering wickedly in Pawel Pawlikowski’s sexy, controversial My Summer of Love.