Before she was “canceled” for saying the “wrong” thing to someone, the actress Emily blunt And I was afraid to speak.
“It was terrifying… you’re just gripped by terror,” says blunt In my new video.
I would also wake up scared, afraid that I might have to do live TV for a few seconds.
We were afraid to speak because we both stutter.
“Are you okay?” i ask blunt,
“Do you?” She counter-attacks.
No, the answer is. None of us are healed. Stutterers rarely lose their fear of certain words.
But we have found ways to deal with it.
blunt Avoids situations that cause him to stutter.
“I want to pitch a scene,” she says, “I can’t do that… I’d rather say, ‘Give me the scene and I’ll write it and then send it to you.'”
On the phone, she’s afraid to give her name. “If I’m calling someone and they say, ‘What’s your name?’ This is difficult.”
Our stuttering was even worse when we were children. blunt Tried not to speak. She just became silent.
“I didn’t want to be in any school plays. I didn’t want to read my poetry in class.”
She wanted to keep her problem a secret.
“You didn’t talk about it at all.”
Her family rarely talked about it, although her grandfather, uncles, and cousins also stuttered.
“We have to destigmatize this thing,” she tells me. “Nobody talks about it.”
That’s why she was talking to me.
Both blunt And I work with a charity called the American Institute for Stuttering (AIS). AIS tells people who stutter: Go ahead and speak, even if it means stuttering in front of people.
This “go ahead and stutter” treatment is probably one of the better options. The happiest stutterers are those who speak openly, even if they stutter.
but no blunt Nor do I want to stutter in front of people.
It really misrepresents you,” says blunt, “You know what you want to say…but you can’t say it. It’s just capturing.”
And shameful.
“Shame, it’s the hardest thing,” says blunt,
And yet she is a hugely successful actress.
blunt She doesn’t stammer when she acts. It is not uncommon. Playing another character gives many stammerers the opportunity to speak fluently. You may not know that Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis and James Earl Jones also stutter. They don’t stammer on stage.
blunt She discovered the benefits of “playing another role” when she was 12 years old. Doing impressions, she became proficient.
“I can mess around on the playground and make silly noises,” she says.
A teacher noticed him. He encouraged her to act in class plays.
“I did a really silly Northern English accent. It allowed for a lot of flow!”
Did this mark the beginning of his film career?
“It would be a great sound byte, but I wouldn’t say it was the moment I decided to be an actress. But it freed my voice in a big way.”
But while actors can do other voices, I couldn’t do that when I got a job as a TV reporter.
I didn’t choose that job. I fell into it, I never thought I would fly in the air.
seattle The magazine offered me a job in its circulation department, but the magazine closed before I could get there.
“Do you want to work at our TV station?” a manager asked.
“Okay,” the young man told me.
I researched for the anchors and avoided speaking myself.
Then they pressured me to cover a story. I’ll get a film editor to cut out my blocks. I was afraid to speak.
Eventually intensive therapy at a clinic in Virginia helped me. They used computers to reward us stutterers if we started speaking softly.
They slowed down our speech by two seconds per syllable. That was really tiring. It seemed to us as if cows were mooing. But it helped me. Soon I learned to speak without any inhibitions.
It felt as if a cork had been removed from my throat. You couldn’t shut me up. That treatment allowed me to pursue a TV career.
I assumed the treatment would work for everyone, but it didn’t. Other stutterers who are less motivated than me may not have spent as much time practicing. In any case, that company is now out of business.
“I don’t think the same method will work for everyone,” says blunt,
This will not happen.
It’s good that we have options.
More information about this at: www.StutteringHelp.org.
Copyright 2024 by JFS Productions Inc.
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