Many know her as the actress who broke onto the limelight in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, but few are aware that long before she became famous, actress Emily Blunt used to stutter.
Born in Wandsworth, London, Blunt is the second of four children and her mother was a former actress and teacher while her father was a barrister.
She started struggling with stuttering (a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetitions in the flow of speech) at the age of 14 and disclosed to Marie Claire magazine how she eventually overcame the disorder.
Revealing that the stutter started to take hold when she was about six or seven, Blunt said it got worse as she became older.
It wasn’t the whole part of me; it was just a part of who I was. There were certain people who liked to define me by that. That was tough. I decided not to really spend time with those people. I’ve probably only now come to realize that everybody has something growing up. That just happened to be my thing.Emily Blunt
She says that it was acting in grade school that helped her overcome her stutter and discover her voice.
And that was very liberating for me as a kid. Suddenly, I had fluency… Stutterers don’t feel understood. It’s not psychological. It’s not that you’re nervous, it’s not that you’re insecure, it’s not that you can’t read, it’s not that you don’t know what you want to say. It’s neurological, it’s genetic, it’s biological. It’s not your fault.
I encourage empathy in my kids and embracing differences and not being scared of them, or teasing people for them, you know? Making mistakes or feeling like you have something that causes you to make mistakes, is a good thing. It’s how you learn and it’s how you grow. When you go through something like that, you establish a real sense of kindness. And you’ve got to be kind to yourself and you’re going to be kind to other people.
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