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Emily Blunt believed that her breakthrough role came with her debut film My Summer of Love. Although the feature helped Blunt make a name for herself, it may have also had an undesirable side-effect on her reputation.

Emily Blunt thought she was rubbish in her breakthrough role

Emily Blunt at the premiere of Mary Poppins.
NIKLAS HALLEN/Getty Images

Blunt gained much attention after starring in the Pawel Pawlikowski movie My Summer of Love. The project also co-starred Natalie Press, and was a story about two completely different young girls forming a bond. Being that it was Blunt’s first full-length feature, the experience helped shape Blunt into the actor and movie star she’d eventually become.

“It was such a weird little film, but the one where I learned the most because I hadn’t trained at all,” Blunt said about it in an interview with Vulture.

But auditions don’t always go as planned. So initially, Blunt didn’t think she made a good enough impression to snag the role.

“I’d never done any improvisation before, and I didn’t know what to expect,” she once said according to Bluntforce. “My agent just said just go in, you’re gonna improv a few scenes. I went in, and Pawel was there with his little camcorder and sort of gave me a few scenarios. Then I just did it with the casting director, and he stopped me a few times and we tried something else. I thought I was rubbish. I laughed on my way out, ‘There’s no way I got that.'”

Emily Blunt once felt her first movie gave her the reputation of being nasty

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After her success in the film industry, Blunt became acquainted with the other side of fame. Somewhere along the way she felt she rubbed others the wrong way. So she tried to combat her newfound reputation by smiling a lot.

“Everyone says: ‘You’re a right b****!’ But I’m honestly not,” Blunt once told Britain’s Daily Express (via Contact Music). “I suppose it’s the British accent and some of my work, like my first film My Summer of Love, where I played a devious girl. I try to smile and be as friendly as possible so people will go home and say: ‘You know what? That Emily Blunt isn’t nasty at all!'”

The Quiet Place star once confided that she usually focuses on getting more work to ignore the personal criticisms leveled at her.

“It’s a really magical job, so the side effect of what comes with that can be good and bad. But what I get out of it is the work. It’s not whatever people think of me…because with that comes bad regard and that willingness to see you fall as well. A lot of people like to see a fall from grace. There’s a real hunger for that. I’m aware of that, so I try not to buy too much into what people think,” she once said in a 2009 interview with Pop Entertainment.

Emily Blunt once found it hard to accept compliments about her

For Blunt, it might have been just as difficult to respond to people complimenting her as it was for labeling her as rude. In a 2010 interview she did with Stylist (via Contact Music), Blunt confided that praise sometimes just triggered her insecurities.

“It’s hard to accept the nice things that people say about you because I’m the one that has to live with the fear,” she said. “I constantly feel like, ‘Oh my God, am I going to be able to do this?'”

The Jungle Cruise actor also explained how praise could even stunt someone’s growth in the industry.

“If you buy into all of the hype then you’re in trouble. Don’t limit yourself,” she said. “You always have to push yourself to do more and not settle for anything just because someone says something nice about you.”