Stanley Tucci feared the 21-year age difference with future wife Felicity

Actor Stanley Tucci has expressed doubts about dating a much younger woman who almost ruined his chance at happiness with his future wife Felicity, the sister of his The Devil Wears Prada co-star Emily Blunt.

Tucci, 62, says he considered breaking up with literary agent Felicity Blunt because he is 21 years older than her.

“I was afraid to get into a relationship and I kept trying to break it up because I’m so much older than her and I didn’t want to feel old for the rest of my life. But I knew this was an incredibly special person,” he told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs today.

Emily, now 40, introduced Felicity to Tucci and his then-wife Kate at the 2006 premiere of The Devil Wears Prada. But the romance only started after they met at Emily’s 2010 wedding to actor John Krasinski in Italy.

Tucci, now a widower with three children after Kate died of breast cancer in 2009, married Felicity in 2012. He now lives in London with her and their two young children.

Tucci and Kate, who died of breast cancer in 2009, on ‘Road to Perdition’

Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci arrive at the 15th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards held at the Hollywood Palladium on January 15, 2010

“Felicity has been so incredible taking on a widower and three kids,” he says. “That’s also a huge thing at a very young age. If anyone made it better for all of us, it’s her. She’s the one.’

Tucci also reveals his guilt for not being with Kate at the end.

He says, “I was afraid it would affect me so much that I wouldn’t be able to take care of the kids. That it would overwhelm me, so I had to distance myself. There were other people with her, my stepdaughter and friends, and that was a good thing. I did what I had to do to get the kids started. But you still feel guilty about it, you feel sad.’

Tucci, who also starred in the Julie & Julia and The Hunger Games series, says former social worker Kate is still present in his life.

“I see her sometimes,” he says. “There’s a part of you that says, ‘Oh no, that’s not her’ and then you think maybe it’s her.” Maybe she didn’t really die. I have so many dreams. You never really believe anyone is dead and I’m starting to understand that now.’

He has won a battle with oral cancer and says his diagnosis in 2017, when Felicity was pregnant with their daughter Emilia, changed his outlook on life. “It was a terrible time,” he says. ‘It makes you human. I was not fully aware of my mortality even after Kate’s death and so many friends had passed away from cancer. Now I get it.’

• Desert Island Discs is on Radio 4 today at 11.15am and will be repeated at 9am on Friday.