After her fierce performance in Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt wanted to take a break from action movies. But Canadian director Denis Villeneuve wanted her to give it another go in the drug cartel thriller Sicario. She wasn't so sure, having just given birth to a baby. "But he's like a quiet assassin," Blunt says. "He lures you in with this smile and this lovely humour, and suddenly you're in Mexico, speeding down the street!"

Emily Blunt and others in SicarioEmily Blunt is a tough-talking officer in crime thriller Sicario

While working on the film, Blunt was shocked at "the sheer brutality of the imprint that cartels leave on people's lives". But she liked the way Sicario (the word is Mexican slang for "hitman") never shies away from that. "I think it reveals how cheap life has become for everybody," she says.

More: Read our review of 'Edge Of Tomorrow'

The film required her to do some astonishingly gruelling fight scenes. "This part in Sicario was very different in many ways from the part in Edge of Tomorrow," she says, "because that was an all-out action heroine sort of role, and this is a quiet, shy, restrained person. I think the mistake people make is that, just because I'm carrying a gun and working in a male-driven world, that doesn't necessarily make my character a really tough person."

And she certainly isn't willing to go halfway. "If I'm gonna do an action film, I want to see some action," Blunt says. "Being tied to a tree somewhere saying, 'Help me!' has never been of interest."

Watch the trailer for 'Sicario' here:


 

In another first for her, Blunt has just finished filming her role as an evil queen in The Huntsman. "I don't think I have played evil before. But here I just cast spells and generally harm people," she laughs. "It's been great. Charlize Theron and I had a crown-off every day! It was the hammiest, hammiest performance, but it was really wonderful. Jessica Chastain's in it, another powerhouse, and Chris Hemsworth. We kind of let him be one of the girls when we felt charitable. Poor Chris. I don't think he'll ever work with women again!"

More: Emily Blunt doesn't think of her character as 'tough'

And up next is one of the lead roles in The Girl on the Train. "Well, I'm about to play an alcoholic in that," Blunt says. "So I guess that's what I'm looking for - looking to play Boozebag McGee!"