The Total Film Interview - Cate Blanchett

Luminous, statuesque, angular, daunting, thoroughbred. These are adjectives commonly used to describe Catherine Elise Blanchett, the most respected actress since Streep and Fonda.

They all fit. A tall (though not as tall as you’d think – 5’8”), striking woman of phosphorous skin, sharp bones and fierce blue eyes, Blanchett has lent her severe beauty, glinting intelligence and, of course, frightening talent to a procession of privileged characters. An heiress in breakthrough movie Oscar And Lucinda. A pair of queens in Elizabeth and The Lord Of The Rings (one human, one Elven). A vain, dignified, disdainful actress – Katharine Hepburn, no less – in The Aviator.

Yet to describe Melbourne-born Blanchett with only words of frigid reverence is to be myopic. This is an actress who locates the frailties in the most regal of characters, chipping away at layers of class and austerity to find the vulnerability and warmth – the humanity – within. The Blanchett Total Film meets is bold and confident but also self-deprecating, witty and likeable, quick to offer a wide smile or a sudden laugh. She’ll stray from talking about her career to chat about her husband (script editor Andrew Upton) and two sons (Dashiell, four, and Roman, two), scrambling to find their photos on her phone before blurting, “That’s me on the loo – you don’t want to see that!” She’ll go from discussing her acting technique to asking about the travails of being a film journalist, from nattering about her childhood to asking about yours. She is, in a word, normal: eager to engage in everyday conversation.

Dressed in black (skirt, blouse, heavy-framed glasses) with strawberry blonde hair, Blanchett’s given up her Friday night to sip vodka tonics and eat a rocket-parmesan salad (“I’ve just had shepherd’s pie with the boys...”) with Total Film. Well, that and to discuss her latest role in Little Fish, an intimate drama set in the Sydney suburb of Little Saigon and costarring Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill. Directed by local lad Rowan Woods, it’s the tale of an ex-addict’s battle to reintegrate and reconnect, the 37-year-old actress inhabiting workingclass washout Tracy Heart as she struggles to start her own business and to trust in love.

Little Fish appealed to Blanchett because “it’s not melodramatic; it doesn’t have the same cut and thrust that films of its supposed genre have.” She had no worries about leaving Hollywood to feature in a homegrown drama, either. “Nah,” she says, in her soft Aussie accent. “A director said to me once that I had to stop playing small roles and appearing in small films. I looked at her like she was insane. I think once you start moving on the walkway of film, there’s this tacit expectation that you should all be on the same trajectory. I’m more piecemeal than that…”

Yeah. It also explores the wasteland that comes when you’re 30 if you’ve fucked up your twenties. Forget having addiction issues; it’s that thing of trying to get one’s life together, to actually build a future. I found that universally interesting: the shadow of living in your fuck-up. When I say fuck-up, I mean in society’s eyes. I loved the miniature nature of Tracy’s dilemma. It wouldn’t radiate outside her suburb – her life is insignificant in the scheme of things – yet her problems are Shakespearean.

You’re always looking for the point of connection and it’s always elusive. A lot of research that actors do is basically to stave off anxiety. I find that if you’re actively engaged in life as a human being, then the wellspring you draw from is yourself. But Rowan is a research freak so we had a lot of interviews with addicts, counsellors and parents or siblings of addicts. But one can feel a little grand as an actor, swanning into someone’s life and saying, “Tell me your story, I want to use it.”

Yeah! I could never do them. I finally did one when I was in Port Douglas. I was on a massage table and I put my head in the hole and I freaked out because there was one of those fucking computer images. I thought, “How am I gonna relax when I’m looking at these fucking dots? I can’t fucking do them!” But she was such a good masseuse that eventually the zebras emerged. That’s what the moment of connection to a character is. As long as you glimpse the zebras once, you don’t have to worry about it.

Well, some films have a style to them, so you need to find the truth within that style. Take The Good German, the Steven Soderbergh film I’ve just done, or The Aviator with Martin Scorsese. You’re slotting into a particular type of performance style. We talked about this a lot on The Good German, which is kind of like Casablanca in the sense that it’s a ‘Love That Was That Can No Longer Be’ story, set in post-World War Two Berlin. We talked about the heightened performance style of the ’40s, where it was all about what people did and said, not what they felt. It’s the antithesis of what we’re taught now.

I’m very naïve about all that stuff. I suppose the more you do it, the more aware you get. I found it all fantastic the first time out; it wasn’t until the last week that I realised it was all stress and disappointment. But the way it panned out for me was great. You don’t want to peak at 27 [by winning] and besides, there’s a sense that people aren’t rewarded for their performance alone but for their body of work. That’s as it should be.

It doesn’t just exist in the movie industry: there’s plenty of diva behaviour elsewhere! I haven’t got time for any of it. It’s something that happens and I can see why it does: if you’re an actor, you’re not allowed to ride a motorcycle or a horse because, if you break your leg, filming stops. That makes some actors feel like they’re the most important person in the world. But you can turn the coin and see it as it really is: it’s not because they’re looking after you, it’s because you’re an important cog in the machine. But yeah, success reveals who you really are. You have the possibility to… unleash.

With respect. All I want is respect. Everyone wants to be respected, don’t they? You want your work to be respected whether you’re working in the props department, whether you’re the cinematographer, the make-up person or whatever. You want to feel your effort is being appreciated. I haven’t got every ounce of my being invested in film; I can contextualise because I’ve had children and worked in the theatre. I come from a different angle to someone who started off as a child actor or who crossed over from being a musician or a model.

I used to just take things as they came up. Now I have to think two years ahead because I have to think about how long the boys are going to be in school. As an actor, you have a healthy lack of consequence; being a parent is all about looking at the span of your children’s childhood. But they’re still young, so I’m very ebb and flow about it at the moment. And travelling does afford them some extraordinary opportunities.

That’s definitely true! It was before my father died, so I can’t attribute it to an obsession with death. When I was seven, I loved those old Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone. The Scarlet Claw was one of my faves. And I loved all the Halloweens and that film about the haunted house… Burnt Offerings, with Oliver Reed. Every birthday party was a slumber party and we’d watch horror films.

When I was in drama school, I lived in a house where a girl was murdered. I was in the top room, where she was killed. Just before I moved in, Australia’s Most Wanted came in and did a re-enactment… and I decided to watch it one night, so I saw this guy climb in my room and strangle the girl in the bed. I became obsessed with it. I wanted to make atonement and at least find out if there was anything there. But nothing ever happened and I was very disappointed. It would have been so comforting, no matter how terrifying, to have some connection with the “outside”.

I’m playing her at 52. I kept going, “No, no, I’ve done it,” until they presented me with a script that was about a religious war and that was about a woman dealing with the fact she’ll perhaps never have a child. I found that dilemma very pertinent and modern. The religious dogma was timely and apt, too. I also couldn’t possibly say no to the cast: Mary, Queen Of Scots is played by Samantha Morton, who’s brilliant, and it also stars Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Abbie Cornish [from excellent Aussie drama Somersault] and Clive Owen.

Bundies… undies! Up until six years ago, I still had these stretched, elastic, homemade undies that my mother made me in high school to go with my grey and green uniform! [Holds hands apart to illustrate said bundies’ Bridget Jones-style proportions] I actually thought they were quite sexy! [Pauses] I was wearing a girdle on The Talented Mr Ripley. It was incredibly uncomfortable, so that’s probably what it was. Or maybe I was just trying to freak him out!

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