“The thought of the gym makes me want to cry” Emily Blunt on why she's sick of being healthy

People


“The thought of the gym makes me want to cry” Emily Blunt on why she's sick of being healthy

By Stylist Team

10 years ago

We've all thought it, and now Emily Blunt is saying it. Being healthy all the time is a total bore.

In an interview published in The Sunday Times Style yesterday, Emily explodes the myth that actresses are all about diets.

“Not true,” she says. “I think that’s your choice. Obviously, if I’m doing a part where I need to be in really good shape, I can’t eat this [she points to her enormous fried fish sandwiches].

“But I’m about to play an alcoholic so we’re good. And I’m specific about when I choose to be healthy and when I’m not, because it’s so dull to be healthy all the time.

“Do you know Elizabeth Taylor said on her deathbed, ‘I wish I’d eaten more.’ Don’t you think a lot of people would feel that? Certainly a lot of actresses?”

“I see myself in Edge of Tomorrow and I’m like, ‘Now that is ripped,’” she says of the 2014 film for which she had to “bulk up”. While she admits that it felt good at time, she says, “but I don’t feel very feminine. I don’t enjoy being ripped like that.” 

When asked about the sequel she said “the thought of the gym again makes me want to cry.”

While promoting her new film Sicario, Blunt, 32, also spoke about the role she is most famous for - Miranda Priestly's demon assistant in The Devil Wears Prada

She says, “people are always coming up to me and quoting those lines,” including: “I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese.”

On the Howard Stern show last week, the actress said some of the inspiration behind the character's most cutting lines came from watching a mum in a supermarket. 

“I saw a mother speaking to her child and it's a line that gets quoted back to me now,” she said. “She yelled at her kid in a supermarket and she went like this with her hand...she opened and she closed her hand and she goes, 'Yeah. I'm hearing this and I want to hear this.’

She also admitted that she based the character on someone she knew who will “remain nameless.”

“I don't think people ever know themselves, so that's my theory,” she said.

Having played a string of powerful and leading female roles, Blunt says she too has experienced a level of sexism in Hollywood. With regards to her latest role in Sicario - where she plays an FBI agent and leads a cast that includes Benicio Del Toro - there was pressure for her character to be rewritten as a man.

“One studio said if you rewrite it as a guy, we’ll up your budget. Because we’re dealing with the myth that female-driven films don’t make money, even though we’re shown time and again that they do.

“With Sicario, it would have been a completely unexciting dynamic change to have a guy playing that part.

“I try to ride that stuff out. At the end of the day, it didn’t happen, so I don’t have anything to be angry about,” she adds. 

Images: Rex Features

Topics

Share this article

undefined

By signing up you agree to occasionally receive offers and promotions from Stylist. Newsletters may contain online ads and content funded by carefully selected partners. Don’t worry, we’ll never share or sell your data. You can opt-out at any time. For more information read Stylist’s Privacy Policy

Thank you!

You’re now subscribed to all our newsletters. You can manage your subscriptions at any time from an email or from a MyStylist account.