Emily Blunt says she knew “disarmingly soon” that John Krasinski, 38, was the one for her.

The London-born actress, 35, says she was sitting at a restaurant with a friend when The Office star walked in.

“We were discussing how much I was enjoying being single. And then [my friend] goes, ‘Oh, my God, there’s my friend John.’ And that was it,” she tells PEOPLE’s Editor-in-Chief Jess Cagle in the latest episode of The Jess Cagle Interview (streaming now on People TV). “We were engaged within 10 months, but I think we probably knew before that.”

Blunt worked for the first time with her husband of seven years in their new film A Quiet Place, which Krasinski also directed. In the horror thriller, the two play a couple trying to protect their kids from creatures that will hunt them down and kill them if they make a sound.

In real life they are parents to Hazel, 4, and Violet, 21 months, and Blunt says this role was “the most personal character I’ve played.”

“The family suffer a loss in the beginning of the film. And so, there were scenes that I found personally more traumatic  because it’s just so close to home for me,” she says. “Everything she wants to infuse in their lives and protect them from is everything that I feel about mine. Normally, there’s a really clear divide for me between the role and between myself. And I like playing people who are very dissimilar to myself this, but this was close to home.”