The wolf man? Easy, I've faced the Devil in Prada

By BAZ BAMIGBOYE

Last updated at 08:43 01 February 2008


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Emily Blunt has spent

several months sewn

into the tightest gowns

imaginable portraying

Queen Victoria and now

she's headed for that

time zone again.

"I can't believe I'm going to spend

another five months in a corset — I'll

probably be passing out because of

lack of oxygen," she joked as we sat in

a school gym in Park City where The

Great Buck Howard — one of her two

films at the Sundance Film Festival

— had just been premiered.

(The other is Sunshine Cleaning.)

The corset crisis is to do with The

Wolf Man — a re-working of the old

Lon Chaney-Victorian melodrama

about a man who returns to his

ancestral home and gets bitten by a

werewolf.

Still, Emily's more than happy to

suffer for her art because her leading

men are going to be Anthony

Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro.

She starts filming The Wolf Man in

London next month.

It's just the latest in a string of major movies

she's been cast in since her two

breakthrough pictures, My Summer

Of Love and The Devil Wears Prada.

Since then, she's appeared opposite

Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's

War (which is now on UK release),

and worked with Jim Broadbent,

Paul Bettany, Rupert Friend and

Miranda Richardson on The Young

Victoria, which is already being

marked as a possible contender for

next year's Oscars.

In the poignant drama-comedy

Sunshine Cleaning she appears with

Amy Adams (star of the current

Disney hit Enchanted) as siblings

who, through economic necessity,

start a firm which cleans up the mess

at blood-splattered crime scenes.

"There was a lot of raspberry sauce

used," Emily said solemnly.

In The Great Buck Howard she

plays a press agent who has to drum

up publicity for a difficult performer,

played by John Malkovich, who tours

the U.S. with his mentalist act.

Buck Howard has seen better days but he

still has enthusiasm for what he does.

"If you do what you love it doesn't

matter where you do it. It was a good

lesson to learn — there are so many

in this business who have lost sight

of what they do. They think it's to be

famous, not to work to entertain," she said, a statement that belied her

24 years.

Colin Hanks also stars as the young

man who works as Buck Howard's

assistant, and Colin's real-life dad,

Tom, also plays his screen father.

Emily said that when she met Rita

Wilson, Tom's wife and Colin's stepmother,

she laughed and asked her:

"Are you going through the entire

family?"

The Sundance movies confirm, for

me, that Emily has both a talent for

drama and to amuse.

She has splendid comic timing, for which she

credits her mother, former actress

Joanna Mackie.

"My mum's very funny, and we laugh

a lot as a family. There's a lot of

teasing and batting back and forth,"

she explained.

She's a very clever, funny girl.

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