Emily Blunt Details First Movie Audition at 19, Says Director Ran Lines With Her and Told Her: Imagine ‘Your Dad Is F—ing His Secretary. You Get Very Mad’

Emily Blunt sat down with Elle magazine for its Women in Hollywood cover series and looked back at her first movie audition, which was for Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2004 romance drama “My Summer of Love.” Blunt was 19 years old at the time. The movie encouraged improvisations, so there was no script to read from during the audition.

“Paweł sat by the window and he had this mad hair,” Blunt said. “He’s filming me on his camcorder and in his Polish accent he goes, ‘Okay, so we’re going to do a little reading. You look out the window and you see your dad and he’s fucking his secretary, and I want you to be horrified. You get very, very mad. Then get very upset and cry about it. And then at some point, pretend the whole thing’s a joke. Okay, go.’”

“He gave me no opportunity, but to put my feet to the fire,” Blunt added, noting that she immediately called her agent afterward and recounted how awful and embarrassing she thought she did in the audition. Blunt ultimately got the role, starring opposite Natalie Press in the film.

“It was about living in the moment, and really becoming somebody else,” Blunt said about acting in the film, which centers on the romance between two young women. “Paweł taught me a lot about ambiguity and spontaneity, which was completely terrifying to me at first. To work without any conformity was super scary. But I learned swiftly afterward from watching the movie how compelling ambiguity can be.”

Blunt continued, “It just really created this foundation for me of, you can do really scary things, you can create, you can change the lines, you can stretch a scene around—you can do that. So I’d say that movie was a big turning point, a big lesson for me. Like being chucked in the deep end with a weight around my ankles.”

While not an enormous box office success, “My Summer of Love” was strongly embraced by film critics and won the best British film prize at he BAFTAs. The movie was Pawlikowski’s second feature directorial effort and he would go on to helm the likes of “Ida” and “Cold War,” the former of which won the Oscar for best international feature and the latter of which earned Pawlikowski a best director nomination.

Blunt’s performance in “My Summer of Love” was widely praised, withVariety’s review calling her “terrific” and praising her for adding a “sense of menace” to the film with her “mysterious, mixed-up” character.

Head over to Elle magazine’s website to read Blunt’s latest profile in its entirety.