“I think I need to be really relaxed and calm to speak freely,” the actress Emily Blunt told Howard Stern this week. She stuttered as a child and it still comes back to her sometimes, especially on the phone where there’s “pressure to communicate only with your voice.” Blunt’s comments on Stern didn’t reveal anything new — Blunt has been an advocate for stutterers for years, being part of the Annual American Institute for Stuttering.
Blunt has famous company in her stuttering. To read the list you may have a hard time believing stuttering is an impediment at all. Given a big public platform by the 2010 film The King’s Speech, stuttering has been with people since they learned to speak. Here are just a few notable people who have at times been stutterers. Stuttering affects 65 million people worldwide, according to StutteringHelp.org.
- Wayne Brady
- Tim Gunn
- Winston Churchill
- Marilyn Monroe
- Carly Simon
- James Earl Jones
- John Stossel
- Emily Blunt
- Ed Sheeran
- Charles Darwin
