Emily Blunt shared details of her first movie audition at 19 years old during an Elle magazine interview. The experience was for director Paweł Pawlikowski's 2004 film 'My Summer of Love,' where she was asked to improvise an emotional scene involving infidelity. Despite feeling she performed poorly, Blunt landed the role and credits it as a pivotal learning moment in her career.
Audition Experience
In her Elle Women in Hollywood cover profile, Emily Blunt described her audition for 'My Summer of Love,' Paweł Pawlikowski's second feature film. At 19, she faced an improvisational process without a script. The director, known for his wild hair and Polish accent, filmed her on a camcorder and directed her to imagine seeing her father 'fucking his secretary,' evoking horror, anger, upset, tears, and then treating it as a joke.
Blunt recounted: “Paweł sat by the window and he had this mad hair. He’s filming me on his camcorder and in his Polish accent he goes, ‘Okay, so we’re going to do a little reading. You look out the window and you see your dad and he’s fucking his secretary, and I want you to be horrified. You get very, very mad. Then get very upset and cry about it. And then at some point, pretend the whole thing’s a joke. Okay, go.’"
She immediately called her agent afterward, feeling the audition was 'awful and embarrassing.' However, Blunt secured the lead role opposite Natalie Press in the romance drama about two young women.
Impact and Legacy
The film emphasized living in the moment and embracing ambiguity, which terrified Blunt initially but proved transformative. She said: “It was about living in the moment, and really becoming somebody else. Paweł taught me a lot about ambiguity and spontaneity, which was completely terrifying to me at first. To work without any conformity was super scary. But I learned swiftly afterward from watching the movie how compelling ambiguity can be.”
Blunt viewed it as being 'chucked in the deep end with a weight around my ankles,' building her foundation for improvisation and scene stretching. Though not a box office hit, 'My Summer of Love' won best British film at the BAFTAs and received strong critical praise. Variety's review highlighted Blunt's 'terrific' performance, adding 'sense of menace' to her 'mysterious, mixed-up' character.
Pawlikowski later directed Oscar-winning 'Ida' and Oscar-nominated 'Cold War.' Blunt's full Elle interview is available on their website.