The Missing, Lord of the Rings and The Aviator

From: Action - Adventure, 2004-03-12
Date added: 2004-12-15

Cate Blanchett is such a busy woman that she doesn’t even have time for individual interviews. To promote her latest film, The Missing, she only had time for a press conference due to her shooting schedule on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic. She had also just finished doing press for Veronica Guerin and shooting The Aviator.

Despite the less personal format, Blanchett still maintained an engaging atmosphere with the press core. She took questions informally, more like a group conversation of 100 people rather than a stiff Q&A. For an actress so respected as a craftswoman, you might think she’d take herself very seriously, but she does not. The interview is just part of the fun that begins with acting.

In The Missing, Blanchett plays Maggie, a woman whose long lost father (Tommy Lee Jones) comes back to visit her. He’s become a native American, which kind of freaks her out, but when her daughter is kidnapped by Indians who sell women as slaves, she needs her father’s expertise to help find her. On the journey, they face their own family issues, as well as shootouts, horse chases and flash floods.

Can you switch on and off when you have to play such a dark, serious character?
It depends. I mean, some scenes are more intense than others. And I think probably from making Veronica Guerin and going back to work with a young child, your focus has to be almost more intense and you have to switch off at the end of the day because there’s a little creature who needs you. And I found that quite educational really. I mean, I have a very healthy relationship to my work and I find that if a scene is working, no matter how intense it is, you have the catharsis on screen and you can let it go. I think it’s if at the end of the day you feel like you haven’t cracked it, that’s when you go home and it’s more difficult to switch off.

Is Tommy Lee Jones as gruff as we imagine, and how did you penetrate that barrier?
Oh, I broke him down. [Laughs]. I have infinite respect for Tommy Lee as an actor and he is able to as a screen presence, and which I think he does in The Missing as well with such beauty, to access such poignant vulnerability. And he was incredibly generous with me. We didn’t talk a lot off set, but sometimes the way actors connect off set is strangely reminiscent of the characters. There’s such a sparsity to the dialogue and such a yearning to get inside each other’s heads between Maggie and Jones, so maybe that existed a little bit. But, you know, I think we respected one another and he is a brilliant horsemen and knows a lot more about guns than I do so he was a lexicon for me.

When you go into a trance, how did you do that realistically without being too silly?
Well, we talked a lot about that both from a makeup perspective as to how it would be represented and from wanting to do justice to the weight of the Chiricahua’s spirituality and the weight of the whole shamanism part of native American culture. But not to make it too booga booga. And Ron [Howard] always wanted to have the sense of is it happening, is it not happening? Does Maggie have a regular disease or how was her fever broken? For me that moment was cracked when we decided to include Jenna [Boyd] reading the bible in it, because there are many different forms. And you had at the head, you had Jones who has gone native but is in fact white, who is kind of in a strange way that hybrid is sort of the essence of the film.

Do you think this is an atypical role for a woman in a western?
It’s interesting. I sort of, in a strange way, from reading the diaries of women who had the stoicism of which they wrote, felt like Maggie was almost like a truer approach to the quintessential frontier woman. In the sense that there was no time for that, there was no place for that sort of exhibitionism of emotion. A, because there were very few people around to hear it. They were so isolated. And you either sank or swam. And Maggie was definitely a survivor. But I mean, God, what would you do if you found your boyfriend hanging from a calf skin having been suffocated and dismembered? It would be quite horrific.

How does Ron Howard compare to some of the high profile directors you’ve worked with?
Comparisons are pretty odious, but the experience of working with Ron was pretty close to perfect for me. Because he has complete and utter understanding of what it takes to craft, I don’t want to say accessible film, but exciting and engaging film that takes an audience along with it. But he never sacrifices the detailed moments, the human moments because acting is all about revealing what it means to be human. And I don't know whether that’s because he’s an actor or whether it’s just because he’s Ron, but he’s the most uncomplicated, frank person I’ve ever met in my life and so you always know where you stand with him. And he will always go again when he can and he’ll tell you when he can’t.

And so he creates these sets, and he’s not an egobound person, but everyone is just wanting to do everything they possibly can for him because he respects the people he’s working with and he’s very collaborative. He will never ever ask anyone to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself. And I cannot believe, he’s got a boundless reserve of energy which was really important in a film like this because the shooting conditions were really tough and there were no cover sets. We were always light dependent and the weather kept changing. He’s truly an extraordinary not only director, but a person.

Is the challenge different on a big budget film than an indie?
You mean the trappings, the perks packages. No, you definitely felt that everyone’s so-called perks package, not that I have one, but had been definitely put on screen. And coming from quite a non-hierarchical filmmaking background in Australia, I find sometimes American filmmaking on a big, huge scale can become very demarcated and hierarchical. But that comes from the director down and Ron is not like that. So it felt like an Australian film. You really felt like everyone was mucking in. And there was always a rush. We shot a lot of magic hour in the Santa Clara Pueblo for instance, the scene when Jones was coming back. We’re constantly moving, like we were doing one shot while I could hear the camera crew setting up another shot so we could grab it and literally running from one position to the other.

Did you do any reshoots for Return of the King?
No, I haven’t even seen it. I don’t even know if I’m in it. Truly, I don’t.

Any distinct memories from the third portion?
No. I shot all of that in three weeks in June about 1000 years ago. Well, elves are many thousands of years old. I mean, I’ve always, always, always wanted to work with Peter Jackson and I’d work with him again in the blink of an eye. He’s a genius. But it was a very sort of surreal experience for me because they had been shooting for so long and did shoot for so long and I was just in and out very quickly.

What do you think of Peter Jackson’s Oscar chances?
With or without Oscars, Peter Jackson is a genius and everyone knows it. Awards are nice, but he’s got the absolute respect of his peers and the public and I’m sure deep in his heart that makes him feel great. And with or without Oscar, he will go on to make other genius films.

Do you feel the same way?
That I’m a genius? [Laughs]

That Oscars aren’t as important as people think it is?
My husband’s a very smart man and he said this thing to me, when I was nominated for Elizabeth. He said, “Sweetheart, it’s far better to be on the brink your entire life than to have peaked.” And I really hold that. I think that was such a smart thing to say and I think it’s true. You’re always looking for the next thing. So yes, those things are lovely but I honestly don’t know anyone who it’s their primary focus.

Is that why it’s important to go back to Australia?
Because no one cares about Oscars? That’s not true.

To be removed from that side of the film industry?
Oh look, I think it’s difficult to go anywhere in the so-called civilized world. With dissemination of information, everyone sort of feels like they know- - well, we suppose that we know what’s going on in every corner of the globe. But no, the reasons why we keep returning to Australia is that’s where our roots are. That’s where our family are. That’s where all his friends are, our children.

What are your boundaries for promoting yourself in the Oscar race?
I think I’d probably draw the line at opening a supermarket.

Will you campaign?
It’s not a political race. I’m in the middle of working on a Wes Anderson film. I’m also three months pregnant. There’s a lot going on in my life right now.

Which performance would you prefer to be nominated?
That would be incredibly presumptuous of me. If you think you have any control over any of that stuff, you must be completely insane. You make the films, you hope they get a chance to find their audience and it’s great that a producer like Jerry Bruckheimer is behind a small film like Veronica Guerin. We made that in February of last year, so I’m sure he’s held it back because as you know, there’s so many films released, it’s very difficult to find a little tiny window when there’s not that much on, which is never.

To try and get the film out there, but it’s really not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. And I hope people like them. I hope people go and see them. Beyond that, I have absolutely no control.

Will you take time off for your baby?
For my life. For my sanity. I mean, every actor is different and the way people work, there’s a myriad of different ways of working, but for me, having a rich and exhilarating life means I have a lot to draw on as an actor when you go back to work.

Will you do theater?
My husband’s done a new adaptation of Hedda Gabler and I’m playing Hedda at the STC next year. And involved in making an Australian film with an extraordinary director. I don't know if anybody saw a film called The Boys, Ron Woods. So that’s at the end of next year. So I’ll be back for quite a chunk of time.

How challenging was it to take on the persona of Katharine Hepburn?
Look, you panic. Of course you panic because I’m trying to represent somebody in the same medium in which they were iconic, in which the audience rightly feels they have a sense of ownership of her screen persona. But it’s for Martin Scorsese. The script is extraordinary and it’s an enormous challenge. I’m not a fearful person, and so I think that there’s a sense that if you see something that is insurmountable, I’m likely to charge headlong towards it and give it a go. That’s all you can do and obviously the technical preparation has to be really solid. But at the end of the day, I’m an actor in a film. Marty kept saying, “You’re playing a character called Katharine Hepburn.” So I’m not up there doing my cabaret impersonation of her. That would be grotesque. You have to be part of the film and you have to say to Marty, “What do you really want?” And of course part of that job is to go as close towards her physical, vocal mannerisms. But we all know her as the creature, as she called herself, her screen persona, because she was desperately really private. And so to unlock that private person, there’s a lot of poetic license there.

Can you do the voice?
No, I’m no mimic. It’s hard. I’m a terrible dinner party guest. People ask me to do the Scottish accent or do Katharine Hepburn and I always end up sounding Welsh or Indian so I won’t put you through it.

The girls in The Missing said you switch between accents.
Well, maybe when I started off I couldn’t do it. But the more you do, the more honed your muscles are. I mean, there is an athleticism to being an actor, both intellectual and physical. And I think if you prepare really, really well, then you can turn on and off. And in a strange way, they might not have noticed, but my husband commented that I go into this hybrid where it’s not quite the way I speak and it’s not quite the character, but I’m not aware of it.

What’s it like on the set of The Aviator set?
Very different. They’re very different filmmakers but that’s fantastic. Everyone works in a different way. And the story is very different. It’s about Howard Hughes’ disintegration into madness so it’s a very different story from The Missing. But there’s budgetary restraints on that film too, you know. And for me, the most creative moments happen when people do have those restrictions and they come up with really interesting solutions. So that was no different either of those films.

Are you playing Katharine Hepburn over 10 years?
Well, the time is stretched of course because that always happens when you’re streamlining a narrative of someone’s life. But they were romantically linked for about three years I think.

But Hepburn comes back so it probably ends up being about 10 years I guess.

What are you doing Wes Anderson’s movie?
Oh, I’m f*cking it up. No, it’s great. I’m having a ball. I don’t want to say too much about it. I don't think they’re even giving the script out.

Is it a comedy?
Yeah, it’s a Wes Anderson film, so whatever that means.

Was it important to change to something lighter?
Yeah, I mean, it’s been a really great year for me in the sense that working with Ron and working with Marty and now working with Wes, who are all completely different filmmakers. It’s been a smorgasbord of a year for me.

Is there more pressure shooting while pregnant?
I could be a big fatty? [Laughs] No, the great irony is that my character is pregnant, and then I was having the prosthetic belly fitted for Wes’s film. I fainted and I thought that’s really odd. And then I thought I had gastro and then I found out I was pregnant, so no, it doesn’t put any [added pressure]. It probably only helps. It was a very weird experience, because I don't know if any of you have had body casts fitted. I sort of recommend it. You have to take your clothes off, so you’re naked, and they cover you in plaster of Paris on the front and the back, and it’s quite restrictive because you’re from here to wherever. A lot of people did it for Lord of the Rings. And you can’t breathe a lot, so I fainted. And I must have smashed the cast, and they put all this black plastic around me, so I woke up. And if you fainted, you don’t know where you are for the first few minutes. I woke up in black plastic, covered in plaster, naked and I thought, “This is the end.” So my character is pregnant.

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