Ask any young actor or actress who their hero is, and you’ll likely to get one of two responses: Meryl Streep or Marlon Brando. But for Blake Lively, 26, neither Streep nor Brando have had the same influence on her life as world-renowned homemaker Martha Stewart. “I’ve only ever found her to be completely generous and kind,” Lively says of Stewart, who she describes as her “idol,”; in the new issue of Vogue. “She’s one of those people who connect people with each other. She’s there for you.”

One particularly noteworthy example of this was when Stewart stepped in at the last minute to save Lively’s wedding day. “Our wedding was becoming a disaster, and we didn’t know what to do, so we called Martha! She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.’ She sent her team down to save us,”; Lively recounts. “And then she called her friends who have a home in South Carolina and set us up at the most amazing getaway. This is the day of our wedding!”

But despite Stewart’s generous last minute intervention, the wedding was not 100 per cent hitch-free. Fortunately, Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds was able to convince her that the evening’s one disaster was far less disastrous than it first appeared.

“Florence Welch was singing at the reception, and they brought out these sparklers, and I’m watching her sing. I look down and my wedding dress has a big burn mark from one of the sparklers. Right on the front!”; Lively tells Vogue writer Jonathan Van Meter. “And it was just so heartbreaking to me. And later, my dress was hanging up and Ryan said, ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ I said, ‘What?’ And he pointed to the burn. My heart just stopped, because it was such a sensitive little subject. And he said, ‘You’ll always remember that moment with Florence singing and the sparklers. You have that forever, right there, preserved.’ Now that’s my favourite part of the dress.”

Reynolds’ ability to always see the bright side of life is just one of the qualities that his wife finds appealing in her ideal husband – and perhaps one day an ideal father. “He’s going to be a great father and leader and patriarch – he’s so meant to be all of those things,”; Lively gushes. “The fact that he lived so much before we got together, he’s the exact realized person that he should be. And so I get to share my life with the person he’s become, and we get to grow from there.”

After playing a series of drug addicts and criminals in The Town, Savages and Hick, Lively will play a very different type of character in the upcoming The Age Of Adaline: a young woman who, due to a freak accident, stops growing older at the age of 29 and maintains her youthful appearance well into old-age. Lively describes the character as a woman of “depth and experience”; – exactly the type of character that she says she is drawn to in real life.

In addition to being friends with Martha Stewart, 72, Lively is also close with her Adaline co-star Ellen Burstyn, 81, and Jane Fonda,  76 – the latter of whom she met at a fashion awards show. Immediately after making the Klute icon’s acquaintance, Lively recalls how she rushed to report the news to her husband. “I said to Ryan, ‘Darling, I made a new friend.’ And he’s like, ‘You only make friends with senior citizens!’ […] Young people try to heighten their experiences, and I do it, too: This is what makes me interesting. But Jane Fonda is quiet. You know how interesting she is. It’s who she is in every fiber.”

But according to Stanley Tucci, Lively has more in common with Fonda than she gives herself credit for. “I’m convinced she’s not 26,”; he tells Vogue. “She looks like she is, but she’s so bloody smart and wise.”

More on Vogue“s full profile on Lively here.