Though she’s played some forbidding characters on-screen (including her breakout role in The Devil Wears Prada), it’s easy to fall for Emily Blunt. For me, affection came instantly over lunch at the Chateau Marmont as Blunt picked up a menu and cried out, “Arugula and bacon-wrapped dates! Have you had them?”“Yes,” I said. “Bacon-wrapped anything is—”

“Awesome. I know.”

A woman after my own heart. And Blunt’s clever summation of the actor-ridden Chateau—“It’s a bit like a drama school party, isn’t it?”—didn’t hurt either. Read more?

Four new films are set to propel Emily Blunt to Hollywood superstardom. But, as Alan Jackson learns over a ginger beer at her London flat, she’ll always take Roehampton over Rodeo Drive.It’s that extraordinary day in London, the recent Monday when snow covers everything and no buses run, when schools are closed and strangers smile at each other in the street, thus acknowledging both the beauty and sudden emptiness of an unexpectedly transformed capital. Emily Blunt needs to be in Los Angeles by tomorrow evening but the news is that all flights out of town have been delayed, if not cancelled.

Resourceful, the actress has booked a 5pm seat on Eurostar and now will seek to make her onward journey via Paris. That means she cannot meet me for tea this afternoon, as had been planned. And that’s why she has invited me to come instead to her apartment this lunchtime. An out-of-the-ordinary day indeed. Actors hardly ever invite journalists into their homes, unless of course they’re being paid to. Why would they? (more…)