Emily Blunt has revealed that she is taking a break from acting due to the “emotional cost” of leaving her young children to take on projects.
“This year, I’m not working,” the Oppenheimer actor said during an appearance on Bruce Bozzi’s Table for Two podcast on Monday. “I worked quite a bit last year and my oldest baby is 9, like, we’re in the last year of single digits.”
Blunt is married to Office actor John Krasinski, whom she shares two daughters with: Hazel, 9, and Violet, 7.
“I just feel there are cornerstones to their day that are so important when they’re little,” she explained. “And it’s, ‘Will you wake me up? Will you take me to school? Will you pick me up? Will you put me to bed?’ And I just need to be there for all of them ― for a good stretch. And I just felt that in my bones.”
Blunt said that she worked a lot last year on projects that were at times intense and time-consuming, which prompted her to step back from working for a bit.
“The ones that are time-consuming, I think for me are becoming few and further between because of just the emotional cost on me, on the kids, on balance,” she said, adding that she is “very prone to guilt.”
“I think maybe all mothers are,” Blunt explained. “You’re just prone to feeling bad for, god forbid, wanting something outside of being a mother.”
She also said that she struggles with moderation while working, and said her idea of balance “sways in extremes”.
“I’ll work too much, and then i’ll have a complete reaction against it and an aversion to being on a film set for some time,” she said. “And then I’ll desperately want to work again.”
As far as her kids watching any of her projects, The Devil Wears Prada star joked that her children are “embarrassed” and “horrified by the fact” that she is an actress.
They “have no desire to watch me in anything, which is very healthy, because they just want me to be their mom”, she said.
Blunt has previously admitted that both of her children don’t really rush to watch either parent on-screen, and are rather indifferent to their fame.
“When I see myself up on a billboard, I have this complete disassociation with it ... I’m like, who’s that?” Blunt said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK last month. “And I can see my children doing the same — they might say, ‘Oh, there’s mama,’ but it’s not exciting for them. What’s exciting for them is when I can pick them up from school and take them swimming.”