Actress Emily Blunt is opening up about her speech challenge, saying her stuttering started around the age of six then progressively worsened.
Thankfully she found help and now she’s paying it forward. The actress is in high-demand starring in two major upcoming movies including The Quiet Place 2 and Wild Mountain Thyme. But even with her busy schedule, Emily and her friend Carl Herder from the American Institute for Stuttering are taking the time to discuss the lifelong issue that for some time impeded her from talking.
“I think when you were up with a stutter the last thing you want to do is to be in a profession where you have to speak and you have to speak publicly,” said Emily. “So it never occurred to me that I was going to end up being an actress.”
Emily overcame her stutter with help from a caring teacher. “And he said do you want to be in the class play and I said no, and he [the teacher] said well I think you’re good, and I heard you doing silly voices and silly accents, and you speak very fluently when you do these voices,” recalled the actress while adding that it was all incredibly illuminating for her.
Emily has been involved with the American Institute for Stuttering, known as AIS, since 2009. Carl is the clinic director for the Atlanta office. Together the explained why stuttering happens.
“I think there’s so much misinformation about what is that, or is that associated with some sort of nervous disposition or a psychological disorder and actually it’s genetic, it’s neurological,” explained Carl.
Emily and Carl both advocate those who stutter to not allow themselves to be defined by the speech impediment. Emily also adds that one really important thing to not do to a stuttering individual is to finish their sentences. They know exactly what they want to say, just give them time.
