Emily Blunt Reveals She’s Taking A Break From Acting After Feeling ‘Guilt’ Over Being Away From Family

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Update (7/13/23 3:08 p.m. EST): Emily Blunt cleared the air on her recent comments about taking a break from acting. She admitted that taking a few months away were not her giving up her career in Hollywood in a red carpet interview with Deadline on Thursday, July 13. “Honestly that story got so sort of overblown. I’m just taking a little downtime. I’m not quitting Hollywood. I just was taking some months off to be with the kids,” she said.

Original: Emily Blunt is taking a break from the big screen to focus on her family. The 40-year-old actress made the revelation on the Monday, July 10 episode of iHeart’s Table For Two with Bruce Bozzi podcast. “This year, I’m not working,” she noted. “I worked quite a bit last year and my oldest baby is 9, like, we’re in the last year of single digits.” The Devil Wears Prada actress shares daughters Hazel, 9, and Violet, 6, with her husband of 13 years, actor John Krasinski.

“I just feel there are cornerstones to their day that are so important when they’re little,” Emily further reasoned. “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.”

Emily has been super busy over the last few years, and has six upcoming projects, according to IMDb. Her historical drama, Oppenheimer, is due out on July 21, and recounts the development of the atomic bomb. Emily noted that working so much, and especially on long projects, takes an “emotional toll” on her. This prompted her to reassess her workload. “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 explained.

The A Quiet Place star also said she often feels guilty about being away from her kids for so long. “I think maybe all mothers are [prone to guilt],” she hypothesized. “You’re just prone to feeling bad for, God forbid, wanting something outside of being a mother.” Emily added that she is a huge “advocate for women being ambitious.”

However, she also recently admitted that she gets nervous at the thought of children becoming actors. “My toes curl when people tell me, ‘My daughter wants to be an actress.’ I want to say, don’t do it!” she confessed to Harper’s Bazaar in a chat published on June 7. “Because it’s a hard industry and it can be very disappointing. A lot of people tell you not to take things personally – but it’s completely personal, especially when you’re being judged on how you look. So you just have to endure that side of things.”

Emily also confirmed that she is aware it’s a privilege to be able to take a break from work to focus on her family, who could care less about her status in Hollywood. “When I see myself up on a billboard, I have this complete dissociation with it… I’m like, who’s that? And I can see my children doing the same – they might say, oh, there’s Mama, but it’s not exciting for them,” she said. “What’s exciting for them is when I can pick them up from school and take them swimming.”