Blake Lively talks about her second pregnancy and those scary stunts in The Shallows

Blake Lively, the world’s most attractive pregnant person, had a seriously hard time filming her latest movie. The stunts were too real for comfort.

BABY fever has taken over the Blake Lively / Ryan Reynolds household.

“If your kid is around us, they are not safe. We will try to take them, kidnap them and have them spend the night with us forever!” she warns news.com.au.

Lively, 28, is expecting her second child who will join big sister James (named after Reynolds’ father), 19 months old.

It sounds like number two is only the beginning for the broody couple. “We love family. I am one of five kids and Ryan is one of four. We love having family around. We just had 22 family members over to stay with us for three days. We were all sleeping on each other’s beds and the couches were occupied. I love the chaos of that environment. Our life is very full.”

That would appear to be an understatement. One of Hollywood’s most photogenic couples, who met on the set of The Green Lantern, in 2010, are both enjoying spectacularly successful professional careers.

Reynolds’ Deadpool grossed more than $US782 million (on a budget of $US58 million). And Lively has two movies: Cafe Society, opposite Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg, and thriller, The Shallows coming soon.

The Shallows is practically a one-woman show where she battles a great white shark while injured and stranded on a rock 180 metres from shore.

It’s as much a physical triumph as it is emotional one. A natural athlete, she does a lot of the stunts, including much of the surfing scenes.

The shark itself is monstrous in size. She laughs. “I call him the Ron Jeremy of sharks,” she laughs, referring to the notorious porn star of the 80s and 90s known for his well-endowed penis.

“The shark is so huge, he’s as big as the whale. I don’t know where they found one that big.”

As fierce as her character is onscreen, Lively is no damsel in distress. “I used to be afraid of sharks, so naturally, the way to conquer your fears is to face them.

“So I went diving with some great white sharks, and in observing them in their natural habitat, I found it amazing. They were almost like giant dolphins. They weren’t predators and I was fine. But there wasn’t John Williams scoring them,” she laughs, citing the famed soundtrack to Jaws.

The 70s blockbuster movie has been described as “a children’s tea party” compared to The Shallows.

Due to the film’s woman-versus-nature theme, much like Tom Hanks’ Castaway (2000) in which he had to survive on a deserted island, Lively admits, “I stole Tom Hanks’ email address from my husband, but don’t tell anyone,” she jokes.

“I wrote to him about a technical question about the makeup,” she smiles. “And not only did he respond but he gave me advice. He didn’t look down on me for being a young woman in a movie that was so commercial.”

Lively has often appeared in independent films and recognised the mainstream appeal of jumping on board The Shallows. “The fact that this was a movie with a bikini and a shark made me think, ‘Oh, you can sell some Milk Duds and popcorn with this’.”

But filming, most of which happened on the Gold Coast, wasn’t always easy. “I cracked my nose on a buoy so the bloody nose that’s in the movie is actually a real thing that happened to me.

“And also, I was held under the water while I was kicking and screaming for my life, to imitate what a shark’s weight would be like. So there were moments when I had no way to communicate, ‘I am done acting now. I am actually out of breath’,” she explains.

“So there were a lot of true panic moments during the shoot. It was tough.”

Lively waxes lyrical about her idyllic life in Upstate New York. “There is no boss in our home. I think that’s what is nice about the dynamic between my husband, me, my daughter and my parents. When you have love and respect for each other, everybody has got a voice and everybody should be heard.”

She has some unusual plans for the future. “I think it would be the greatest thing in the world to have a comment box in your home. I want to do it with my kids and I’m begging my sister to do it with hers. The kids could leave comments on what you could do better, or what the other kids could do better. Like when you leave a comment with management in a restaurant.”

She smiles. “So, once we have a comment box and we are considered management, we will be the boss of our households.”

Originally published as Blake Lively talks about her second pregnancy and those scary stunts in The Shallows