Emily Blunt wants to make a movie about a stutterer
If you've ever watched Emily Blunt show off her acting prowess on screen, you'd never have guessed that she grew up with a stutter.
The British star, 40, has openly discussed her struggle with the speech disorder, describing it as like 'an imposter living in your body - who doesn't pay rent'.
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She has been a voice for other sufferers across the world and regularly uses her huge platform to shine a light on the topic, as she is all too aware of how it can impede someone's everyday life.
Blunt said in 2018 that she was 'grateful' to publicise the 'disability that lives very often in the shadows alongside its friends: fear and shame and humiliation'.
Although her breakout role in in The Devil Wears Prada in 2006 saw her star as hoity-toity assistant Emily Charlton, the actress had gone through childhood lacking a lot of the confidence that her character had.
She previously explained: "I was a smart kid, and had a lot to say, but I just couldn't say it. It would just haunt me.
"My parents took me to speech coaches and relaxation coaches. It didn't work."
Blunt was reluctant to follow in her mother's footsteps and join the entertainment world due to her stutter - but it was actually acting that helped to remedy her speech issue.
The Oppenheimer star said: "Then one of my teachers at school had a brilliant idea and said, 'Why don't you speak in an accent in our school play?'
"I distanced myself from me through this character, and it was so freeing that my stuttering stopped when I was onstage. It was really a miracle."
Ed Sheeran famously revealed that Eminem's third album The Marshall Mathers LP helped to 'cure' his stutter - so Blunt's story isn't the strangest solution so far.
But not everyone manages to leave their stutter behind when transitioning through their teenage years, which is why the actress is on a mission to make a movie about a person who suffers with the speech issue.
She believes a stuttering protagonist would help 'destigmatise' the speech impediment and allow more people to understand the complexities that come with it.
Blunt told BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour: "The emotional trauma of living with the inability to speak will limit you in ways, that are for someone who speaks fluently, pretty unimaginable. There's so much shame about it.
"There's so much shame about it because there's not enough information, it's neurological. People really deem it psychological. So you're sort of deemed off-putting or unconvincing in order to get a job, or anything like that."
Neurological conditions affect the brain, spinal cord or nerves, wheres psychological conditions affect your mental state.
The Girl on the Train actress continued: "So as long as we can keep destigmatising it, then there won't be so much shame - it can just be more acceptable - because I think it is one trait that is easily bullied still."
Blunt proudly added that she will 'always be a stutterer' and admits she 'flip-flops words around to substitute ones that are easier to say'.
"Certain environments will still create a struggle for me - if someone asks me to pitch them anything it's a nightmare, she added.
"But I did sort of grow out of it."
Topics: Health, TV and Film, Emily Blunt
Olivia Burke