Emily Blunt on her role in The Girl on the Train and relocating to the United States

The announcement that director Tate Taylor's film adaptation of The Girl on the Train, the best-selling novel by Paula Hawkins, would shift the action from the outskirts of London to the suburbs of New York caused a furore among fans of the book.

One concession, it seemed, was the decision to preserve the nationality of the main character – Rachel Watson – by casting a British actor: Emily Blunt, a quintessential English rose. Surely that would help to ­appease the critics?

Not entirely – many were concerned that such a glamorous actor did not fit the character as she was written.

For one thing, Rachel is described as overweight in the book and 33-year-old mother-of two Blunt looks to be in perfect shape – which, she says, is partly thanks to a Hollywood A-lister.

"I always say Tom Cruise is the reason I bounced back after my pregnancy," Blunt says. "He should be called 'the new diet pill', because he asked me to do Edge of Tomorrow and so I had to get into such good shape ­after having [first child] Hazel [in 2014]."

She discovered that she was pregnant with her second child, the week before filming of The Girl on the Train began. Violet was born in June this year.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph's Stella magazine, ­author Paula Hawkins addressed the criticism that Blunt was too attractive to play Rachel.

“Lots of people have complained that she is too beautiful and all wrong,” she said. “She is obviously more beautiful than I imagined Rachel, who is overweight, but it’s about how you carry yourself. That is how [Blunt] gets the damage across.”

And so, in the film, Blunt is a frazzled, chapped-lipped alcoholic, constantly on edge. She says she was attracted to the role because it was a character that was not likeable or appealing, but without the cattiness that made her turn in The Devil Wears Prada so memorable.

The Girl on the Train is Blunt's most high-profile lead role to date, in a big-screen career that began in 2004 with My Summer of Love. Asked how she has coped with fame, Blunt responds with a quip – witty responses seems to be her very British go-to ­mechanism.

“Yeah, I think people don’t think they went to school with me anymore,” she says. “It’s a strange thing.”

The controversy over the switch from England to the United States should not have come as a huge surprise to Blunt – she knows better than most the ­potential pitfalls that come with relocation. The London-born star moved to Los Angeles when she married American actor and filmmaker John Krasinski in 2010. They have two children together and she became an American citizen last year.

Blunt felt the wrath of many fellow citizens of her new country when she joked that she regretted becoming an American citizen while watching a debate between Republican presidential candidates. In the backlash that followed, Blunt had to apologise.

Even without this controversy, she admits she experienced some moving pains when she relocated to America’s West Coast.

“It’s complicated, because I have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles and I loathe that one industry [film] emanates from every corner of it,” she says. “Driving down the street, there are billboards about opening weekends and movies, movies, movies.

“I don’t like the lack of culture. I know there are some diehard LA people that argue with me about this – but I grew up in London, so it’s hard for me to accept that a couple of art galleries means you have culture.”

• The Girl on the Train is in cinemas now

artslife@thenational.ae