Cate Blanchett in the flesh

From: Hotline, 2002-12-01
Date added: 2003-09-02

There's no doubt about it, Cate Blanchett is making a pretty good job of this tricky business called fame. She manages to lead a sane, balanced existence, despite being one of the worlds omst prolific (and higly paid) actresses. When she stars in good films (Elizabeth, The Talented Mr Ripley) she os lavished with extravagant praise; and even when she appears in less successful or satisfying movies (Heaven, Charlotte Gray) she somehow emerges unscathed. In her industry, she's at the top of producers' wish lists for meaty roles; yet she has a chameleon like quality to her that helps her look different from film to film - and that means she can live her life without being pestered by fans or paparazzi...

Of all the actor and actresses on the A-list these days, Blanchett is easily the most elusive. She is genuinely not one for glitzy parties or the chat-show circuit; other actors pretend they care little for such exposure, but Blachett's style of life confirms it. It's a sign of how successfully she keeps her private life just that - private - that she has lived in north London for the past two years now, yet most people in this country don't even know it.

She also manages to remain genuinely unaware and unconcerned about her public image. I ask her how she thinks people perceive her, and she has no idea how to answer the question. I prompt her, saying that she comes across as seious and maybe a little high-minded. She smiles mysteriously. "Oh, I'm sure," she says, literally shrugging off the topic. But her rare experiences with media intrusiveness do bother her; she was irritated by a trivial sotry based on nothing more earth-shattering than the fact that she occasionally travels round London by bus.

"That makes me think, 'God, my job's silly'," she sighs. We meet somewhere near her home. Characteristically, she has asked that I do not specify the exact location. But for the record, Australian-born Blanchett, 33, and her husband, the playwright, screenwriter and fellow Aussie Andrew Upton (who, like her, prefers to keep a low profile), live in a large three-storey Georgian house in a chic part of Islington. They share the house with their baby Dashiell John, who was born in December 2001.

Yet they hardly live grandly; for example, she informs me that their TV is an anvient 12-inch portable that they stationed on a spare chair. Its aerial, she thinks, might just be a coat hanger. "Andrew says, and he's right, once you have one of those huge widescreen TVs, it becomes to focal point of the whole room," she explains.
As we talk, I study Blanchett's face. It's part of her enigmatic quality that, in real life just as in her movies, she can look strikingly different on different occasions.

I have met her three times, and it's been impossible to aniticipate her appearance. On this occasion, her hair is blonde, with a zig-zag parting. (But tomorrow, who knows?) Still, there are constant features about her. SHe stands a willowy five-foot-eight and she has a pale complexion, a wide mouth and prominent cheekbones. Her ability to adopt different masks for different occasions has fascinated me and baffled her work colleagues. Anthony Mighella knows better than most; he directed her in The Talented Mr Ripley, as the socialite Meredith Logue, and was a producer of Heaver, in which Blanchett plays a stern Englishwoman in Italy, bent on avenging her husband's death at the hands of a drug dealer.

"You see her in Ripley and it's as if she has no bones," Minghella says, flopping in his seat to make his point. "There was something so skittish about her. It seemd all she could do was that one way of being. Then you see her in Heaven, and where is that person? Now there's an intensity and stiffness about her, like every one of her bones has a steel pin in it. It's as if she has a new face. It's very impressive," he says.

Obviously, such talents are developed through long hours of study, work and solitary thought. But it would be wrong to portray Blanchett as humourless or joyless. And though she clings to her privacy, she's not above turning up to award ceremonies like the Oscars ofthe BAFTAS looking glamorous; certainly she's not immune to the fun of looking good in a smashing frock. She sees no conflict between that and being serious about acting: "But after a time you get sick of talking about how one can love clothes and enjoy a party, but still be interested in the work. Other people can manage to keep those things separate, so I'm not interested in justifying it any more."

It's this intriguing combination of real skill and fiery intelligence that keeps her in demand. Cate is building on her already impressive CV this winter with the opening of two high-profile films. First up is The Two Towers, second in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which she portrays the elf queens Galadriel. Her appearance in the first Lord of the Rings film was memorable, but brief.
"I'm going to be remembered for that, and honestly, it only took about 12 days of work," she admits, laughing. "I went to New Zealand, where they were making all three films, one after the other. I did it because I wanted to work with Peter Jackson, the director, who I admire. Galadriel's sort of a touchstone for Frodo (Elijah Wood), I think. It's a small part. I think she's in the film because they wanted to get one or two female characters in there."

Still, she's not downplaying the role: "I have met a schoolgirl in the supermarket who'd just seen Lord of the Rings, and I was thrilled. I though, wow, I've just been part of an epic fable that has introduced this child to Tolkien. How important it that?"

In her second film this season, she plays the title role in Veronica Guerin. It is based on a true story about an Irish journalist. Guerin was a reported for the Dublin Sunday Independant, who in 1996 exposed some powerful crime barons and drug lords. They retaliated against the expos' by hiring assasins to gun her down in her car later that year.

"Veronica has become an iconic figure in Ireland," Blanchett says. "People remember where they were when they heard she had been shot. She was an extraordinary woman, a complex, compassionate human being." The film, directed by Joel Schumacher, has been supported by Veronica Guerin's family, especially her brother Jimmy, who helped Cate fill in the details of his late sister's life. "He's been very brave and generous," she says.

The film, shot in Dublin, was Cate's first since becoming a mother. It did not daunt her; she simply took little Dashiell on set with her each day. Now she and Andrew want to add to their family. "Having a baby has opened up a whole new universe to us," she says with a smile. "It's so exciting. I'm loving it."

Given her track record, it would be surprising if both The Two Towers and Veronica Guerin were not greeted with acclaim. As director Sudney Pollack noted: "Cate seems incapable of giving a bad performance." Her remarkable talent was nurtured in Melbourne, where she grew up the second of three children to an American father (who died when she was ten) and an Australian mother. Cate entered the University of Melbourne to read economics and fine art, but dropped out a 18 to travel abroad. Returning home, she enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic art, and went on to work intensively in threatre, notably opposite Geoffrey Rush (who went on to star in Shine) in David Mamet's play Oleanna.

That launched her career, and she made her film debut in Paradise Road, as an Australian woman in a Japanese Prison camp during World War II. Then came Hollywood. Her screen tests for the film Oscar and Lucinda were reportedly so outstanding that director Gillian Armstrong hired the young unknown at the spot, and he co-star Ralph Fiennes personally called Fox Studio executives to reassure them that Cate was perfect to play the headstrong teenage heiress of the title.

This led her to be cast in the keynote role of her career, as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth; it required her to age from a headstrong young adolescent girl to an imperious monarch, and she pulled it off so brilliantly she was nominated for an Oscar. Finally, she has arrived on the world stage, and offers for plum roles came thick and fast: TheTalented Mr Ripley, Pushing Tin, The Gift, Bandits, The Shipping News. In one frantic 12-month period starting in 2000, Cate was such a hot name that she made five films. She harbours strong views and does not accept her directors' opinions meekly. Tom Tykwer, the German director of Heaven, recalled that they argued fiercely about various scenes on set: "We were absolutely obsessed. We didn;t see to talk about anything but that movie."

Blanchett admits there was a lot of cut-and-thrust: "Tom and I would verbally wrestly with each other - passionately so, because we both cared deeply about the film. It was the same with Shekhar Kapur on Elizabeth. It's a repectful debate, but an uncensored one." Yet with the arrival of her baby son, Cate conceded that she has lightened up a little. "I don't necessarily think every job I do is going to reshape the universe," she says. "I just do what I like to do. And so far, I've been lucky."

Her new status as a mother makes it unlikely that she will want to make five films a year in the near future. But followin the ten-month period after Dashiell's birth when she only made Veronica Guerin, her dance card is again starting to fill up. When we spoke she planned to return to Australia to star in a time-travel thriller called The Fountain, the plot of which remains shrouded in secrecy. "I could tell you the story, but then I'd have to kill you," she says sweetly. She then intends to return to the theatre, with a number of stage roles in her native country.

And later next year she will go to work for master director Robert Altman (Gosford Park), playing the exotic, notorious World War I spy Mata Hari. SHe was a former exotic dancer who turned double agent, work for both French and German military intelligence. Altman has said the story will be told from several viewpoints, some confirming Mata Hari was a spy, others caste doubt: "In my view she was a different person to different people." Is it any surprise, then. that the enigmatic Cate Blanchett was his first choice from the word go?

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