Earlier this year Emily Blunt received her first Academy Award nomination, for her sly, brittle supporting turn in Christopher Nolan’s eventual best picture champion, Oppenheimer. It felt like an overdue achievement for the British star, who at that point already had a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors’ Guild award to her name, not to mention four Bafta nominations. At 41, she carries an established aura of prestige that sometimes stands separately from the films she makes. If they handed out Oscars not for individual performances but for thespian comportment, she would doubtless have several by now.
The wait gets less surprising, however, when you take a closer look at Blunt’s blockbuster filmography, heavy on brash commercial entertainments such as Jungle Cruise and the Quiet Place films – making the near-billion-grossing but comparatively highbrow Oppenheimer something of a recent outlier. Where Blunt’s earlier career seemed evenly pitched between English-rose arthouse refinement and mass-market Hollywood stardom, she has largely chosen the latter course since, and hasn’t looked back. Her current worth is estimated at $80m. Most would agree that’s worth a few trophies missing from the cabinet.
