This One Song Sparked Emily Blunt's Acting Career

One unlikely song set Emily Blunt on the road to acting — a revelation she shared at the ELLE Women in Hollywood event in Los Angeles.

Emily Blunt has hopped genres like it is nothing — action, comedy, horror — but at ELLE Women in Hollywood in L.A., she traced the whole thing back to a single song. Not a movie. Not a theater kid moment. A song.

The moment it clicked

Onstage, Blunt said the spark hit at age 7, when she first heard Otis Redding sing "Try a Little Tenderness." At that point she had a heavy stutter and often felt stuck in her own body. Watching Redding pour out every ounce of feeling — the riffs, the fire, the charge of it — flipped a switch. She wanted to feel that same rush.

"I remember as a kid thinking, 'I want to feel that so much, so badly.'"

Chasing that feeling on every job

Blunt said that buzz became the north star for her choices. Every role and every story she has carried since has given her a version of that energy, and that is what she is most grateful for. She also gave credit to the people closest to her, calling her family the softest place to land after long days on set. And even now, looking back at the path from that kid with a stutter to where she is, she says it still gives her whiplash.

What the industry looks like from her side

In her ELLE profile, Blunt talks about navigating Hollywood as a woman — the noise, the spotlight, the constant pressure — and still finding her people in the creative grind. She also shouted out the person who steadied her early on: Dame Judi Dench. Blunt worked with Dench at just 18, calls her magical, and says she was the lily pad that helped her leap into everything that came next. It is a vivid metaphor, and a very specific kind of mentorship you do not hear about often.

I love that the origin story here is not a typical one. A soul classic, a kid desperate to feel something bigger, and a career built on chasing that spark — that tracks. And yes, "Try a Little Tenderness" still goes.