With “Oppenheimer”, Emily Blunt Scores Her First-Ever Oscar Nomination

Despite winning multiple accolades including a SAG Award for ‘A Quiet Place,’ 2024 marks Emily Blunt’s first Oscar recognition

Emily Blunt is an Academy Award nominee! But it may surprise fans of the British actress to learn that Oppenheimer marks her first Oscar nomination.

For her performance as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, wife of physicist and Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 40-year-old actress earned an Academy Award nod for Supporting Actress on Jan. 23. 

Related: Cillian Murphy Calls Oppenheimer Costar Emily Blunt 'One of the Funniest People': I Need 'Levity' on Set

Joining the Mary Poppins Returns star in the Supporting Actress category are Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple, Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, America Ferrera for Barbie and Jodie Foster for Nyad. The winner will be unveiled March 10 at the 96th Academy Awards.

In addition to Blunt, the other first-time acting nominees this year are: Brooks, Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction), Colman Domingo (Rustin), Ferrera, Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer), Randolph, and Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction).

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Despite leading and stealing scenes in a wide array of films, Blunt has never notched Academy recognition until now. Her breakout role, in 2005 TV movie Gideon's Daughter starring Bill Nighy and Miranda Richardson, won her a Golden Globe Award. She accepted that prize at the 2007 ceremony, where she was also nominated for her supporting role opposite Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada — her first of seven acting Globe nods, which include The Young Victoria, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Into the Woods.

For the action-packed Edge of Tomorrow costarring Tom Cruise, she earned a Critics Choice Award in 2015. Husband John Krasinski — who shares daughters Hazel, 9, and Violet, 7 with Blunt — surprised her onstage when she accepted the honor.

Related: All About John Krasinski and Emily Blunt's 2 Kids

Before her Oppenheimer Oscar nod, Blunt had an unusual distinction as one of only two actors to have won a Screen Actors Guild Award without any Academy recognition. In 2019 for starring in Krasinski's A Quiet Place, she took home the statuette, only to be left off the Oscar ballot. (If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King, who had been passed over by SAG nominators, took home that year’s Oscar.) For 2016’s Beasts of No Nation, Idris Elba is now the only SAG winner in history yet to be anointed by the Academy. 

Despite her lack of recognition before now, Blunt has appeared at the Oscars numerous times as her career continued to thrive. At the 2007 ceremony, she and Hathaway memorably presented the Academy Award for Best Costume Design to Marie Antoinette, poking fun at their Prada characters. 

Oppenheimer became the third-highest-grossing movie of 2023 and is now the highest-grossing biopic of all time. It also marks the first time Blunt has ever starred in a Best Picture nominee. In an interview with PEOPLE, she equated filming on location in New Mexico to being at "summer camp."

"We were all in the same hotel in the middle of the New Mexican desert," she recalled in July. "We only had each other.”

Related: Emily Blunt Jokes About Being Distracted by Cillian Murphy’s ‘Ocean Eyes’ on 'Oppenheimer' Set (Exclusive)

That is, except for Cillian Murphy, whose immersive portrayal of Oppenheimer, Blunt joked, entailed eating only “an almond every day.”

"The sheer volume of what he had to take on and shoulder is so monumental," said Blunt of her fellow Oscar nominee. "Of course he didn't want to come and have dinner with us."

The 96th Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air live on Sunday, March 10, broadcasted from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, beginning at 7 p.m. ET.

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