Emily Blunt Reveals She’s Taking a Break From Acting

Emily Blunt is taking a break from acting. The British actress, who stars in Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film Oppenheimer, shared during a recent appearance on iHeart’s Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi podcast that she is stepping away from Hollywood this year to spend more time with her family. Blunt shares two children – daughters Hazel, 9, and Violet, 6 – with husband and fellow actor John Krasinski.

Asked by Bozzi how she juggles her career while also being a mother, Blunt admitted, “Not always well, you know. It’s one of those things when people are like, ‘How do you balance it?’ I never feel like I’m doing it right, you know.” She went on to reveal, “This year I’m not working,” explaining that she “worked quite a bit last year and my oldest baby is nine – like we’re in the last year of single digits – and I just feel there’s cornerstones to their day that is so important when they’re little.”

“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,” she said, adding of her past projects, “some were more intense than others. Some were harder than others. Some were more time-consuming than others, and 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.”

Blunt went on to admit that she’s “very prone to guilt. I think maybe all mothers are. You’re just prone to feeling bad for, God forbid, wanting something outside of being a mother.” The actress said that she is a “huge advocate for it – I’m a huge advocate for women being ambitious. It’s just dreams with purpose, it’s not an ugly word,” adding that she wants her own children “to grow up and find something they adore doing.”

Since becoming a mother – she and Krasinski welcomed Hazel in 2014 and Violet in 2016 – Blunt has continued to add a number of credits to her name, including A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, Mary Poppins Returns, and The English. She can next be seen as Kitty Oppenheimer, an American biologist and the wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who famously led the Manhattan Project, in Oppenheimer. The film is set to hit theaters on July 21, aka Barbieheimer Day, the same day Barbie releases. Blunt’s other upcoming projects that are either completed or in post-production include The Fall Guy and Pain Hustlers.