Stanley Tucci was so concerned with the age difference between him and his wife, literary agent Felicity Blunt, that he once tried to break it off.
Tucci, 62, is 21 years older than Felicity, the elder sister of Tucci’s The Devil Wears Prada co-star Emily Blunt. They married in 2012, three years after Tucci’s first wife, Kate Tucci died in 2009 from breast cancer.
“I was afraid to get into a relationship and I kept trying to break it off,” Tucci said. “I’m 21 years older than she is and I didn’t want to feel old for the rest of my life! But I knew that this was an incredibly special person.”
In the years after Kate’s death, Tucci was unsure if he was ready to get into a serious relationship, he told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne. During the show, he chose to play Frank Sinatra’s “A Foggy Day (in London Town)” because it was the song Tucci and Felicity chose for their first dance.
Kate and Felicity met during the 2006 premiere of The Devil Wears Prada. They “talked a lot that night,” Tucci recalled. Tucci and Felicity reconnected at Emily’s 2010 wedding to actor John Krasinski.
“Felicity has been so incredible taking on a widower and three children whose mother died,” the Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy host told Laverne. “That’s a huge thing, at a very young age too,” he said. “If anybody made things better for all of us, it’s her. She’s the one.”
Tucci has three children from his marriage to Kate, daughters Isabel and Nicolo, both 23 and Camilla, 21. He has two children with Felicity, son Matteo Oliver, 8, and daughter Emilia Giovanna, 5.
The Hunger Games star said the support of his friends and family helped him deal with the grief of Kate’s death.
