Emily Blunt Hates That a Female Lead Must Be 'Likable' Even if Male Is 'a Total Drip'

Her last name is Blunt for a good reason!

Emily Blunt is not into America's Sweetheart roles. From "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Edge of Tomorrow" to her new lead role in "The Girl on the Train," she tends to play a different kind of female lead -- an antiheroine lacking the kind of male fantasy attributes you see a little too often on screen. (Especially in the manic pixie dream girl trope, where a beautiful girl full of life and charm devotes herself to some bland guy with no personality.)

In "The Girl on the Train," Blunt plays Rachel, a depressed, often drunk divorcée obsessed with an attractive couple she regularly spies from her seat on the train. "Trainwreck" applies to the character pretty well, and Blunt loves that about her.

"With so many movies, women are held to what a man considers a feminine ideal," Blunt told The Hollywood Reporter. "You have to be pretty. You have to be 'likable,' which is my least favorite bloody word in the industry. Rachel isn't 'likable.' What does that mean? To be witty and pretty and hold it together and be there for the guy? And he can just be a total drip?" THR added the note "that Blunt herself seems extremely likable as she says all this only underscores her point."

Blunt also took aim at the double standard that gives derogatory names to women for doing the same things as men.

"A woman is a drunk, a wh*re, whereas the guy's like a partyer, a player," Blunt told THR. "I've been around both women who drink too much and guys who drink too much and it's just as ugly on the guys. It makes me crazy. I don't think that women should be seen as any less sexual than a guy. And maybe she doesn't want to settle down, and that's OK. And maybe she doesn't want a kid, and that's OK. And she's just happy playing the field. There's so much judgment with women." Yep, women get "sl*t," "wh*re," or -- if they're not playing the field -- "old maid," whereas an over-40 single guy, like Leonardo DiCaprio, is envied as a "bachelor" or a "player."

Anyway, Blunt's whole interview is wonderfully candid, as always, including a description of how she filmed what turned out to be a fairly physical role while she was pregnant.

"The Girl on the Train," based on the best-selling novel by Paula Hawkins, will be released October 7.

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