Emily Blunt used real life alien abduction stories to help get into character for new Steven Spielberg film

Emily Blunt has revealed she immersed herself in real-life alien abduction testimonies to prepare for her role in Steven Spielberg's new sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day, admitting she had no other frame of reference for the character she was being asked to play.

Speaking to DiscussingFilm, the British actress explained that the role presented a unique challenge precisely because nothing in her personal experience came close to what her character goes through.

"I just had nothing to springboard, to base [my character on] other than watching endless documentaries about people who have experienced something and the reality of what that felt like for them," she said.

Critics are united with praise for Emily Blunt's role in Disclosure Day (Universal Picture)

"You didn't get the bakery until you read it"

Blunt plays a meteorologist who experiences a mysterious alien encounter during a live broadcast in the film, which marks another collaboration between the actress and Spielberg following their work together previously.

She described receiving the script as a drip-feed of information, "he'd only told us a few crumbs about it," she said of Spielberg's approach. "You didn't get the bakery until you read it."

Disclosure Day has landed to a mixed critical reception, though one thing reviewers have largely found common ground on is the quality of Blunt's performance.

The Guardian awarded the film four out of five stars, describing it as "never anything other than entertaining and grade-A fun" and praising Blunt for what it called a "really funny and hyperactive star performance."

The review went further, suggesting she "may yet be morphing into a female version of Tom Hanks" in what it described as a potential career-topper.

The Guardian awarded the film four out of five stars, describing it as "never anything other than entertaining and grade-A fun" (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment )

The 79-year-old Spielberg, whose filmography spans Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park, brings together a strong supporting cast around Blunt.

Colin Firth, Euphoria's Colman Domingo, and Challengers star Josh O'Connor also feature, with O'Connor playing a tech whistleblower attempting to expose classified government files about extraterrestrial life.

Blunt was candid about the anxiety that came with the part, describing the character as "kaleidoscopic" and admitting she was "unnerved" by the scale of what would be demanded of her, even as the prospect excited her.

"These thematic, huge questions that we were kind of bound to ask ourselves by the end of it," she said of the script's ambitions.

It is the kind of role, she suggested, that resists the usual shortcuts actors rely on, there is no real-world equivalent to draw from, no lived experience to borrow.

Instead, Blunt went looking for the next best thing: the accounts of ordinary people who believe, with total sincerity, that something extraordinary happened to them.