Cate Blanchett on fame, fantasy, and reality

From: Harper's Bazaar Australia, 2002-12-01
Date added: 2003-09-07

It's said that even from the earliest age, babies favour beautiful features over irregular ones. That could explain why Cate Blanchett's 10-month-old son Dashiell is gazing at her with such adoration as she bounces him on her lap while having her hair done for the Bazaar shoot. Her husband Andrew Upton has dropped in to briefly reunite mother and son, but ends up staying for hours, setting up camp on the studio floor with their son and amusing him with a selection of well-loved toys: chewed Golliwogs, a plastic alligator head and, Dashiell's hands-down favourite, a plastic spoon. Blanchett takes every opportunity to cuddle them both, even sitting on her husband's lap at lunch.

It's a happy family snapshot, one that wouldn't be out of place in an anonymous, suburban home. Except, of course, this couple is anything but anonymous - somthing that seems to constantly irk Blanchett. She may be considered one of the greatest actresses of out time (with the attendant life-under-a-mcroscope media attention), but off-screen she is steadfastly - almost disconcertingly - normal.

Most actors who talk about shying from the limelight come across sounding just a tad disingenuous, but there's something about Blanchett's rejection of fame tha feels absolutely sincere. Ï think people need a fantasy," she says when asked about the infamous furore she caused in London when she was seen - shock, horror! - catching a bus. "They love the whole 'private jet' nature of it all. In a way, the media have to find a niche for you, and the niche they have found for me is the Bus-Catching-Mother-of-One." Not that being considered normal bothers her too much. - "I think it's hilarious" - but she can't quite understand why people seem so surprised. "The thing is, people aren't interested in contradictions," she says. "The fact that I'm normal is considered boring. We're obsessed with reality TV and everyone having their 15 minutes of fame, but then when someone in the public eye, say an actor, does something ordinary like catch a bus, it's like: 'God, why aren't they catching a private plane to that meeting?' It's a strange dichotomy. People are obsessed with getting to the truth, but the whole thing about being 30 foot high on the screen is how can we ever say that's the truth? It's a total fantasy. Even when you're making the most gritty mockumentary, it's still a fantasy when you're playing out."

But then Blanchett has always been a director's actress rather than a calculated audience pleaser (the result: audiences love her anyway). She takes on challenging roles and is largely unconcerned with their commercial appeal. When asked whether she was disappointed about the lukewarm reception for box-office underachiever Charlotte Gray, Blacnhett seems amazed that a film would even be judged in that way: "I find it distressing, this belief that there's a mass audience you can appeal to. This so-called science of marketing - the belief that there's a film you could make that everyone in the world would go and see. It's the most misplaced concept."
"It was a very particular romantic film," she goes on, "and I think it needed to be released in a way that wasn't caught up in other people's ambitions, and with awards in mind..." she sighs. "Just release it for what it is rather than what people want it to be. What gets me down is when I'm left to answer for othe people's ambitions. There's a sense that all actors have the same level of power and control - and, frankly, the same level of ambition - and it's not true."

Blanchett always laughs off the celebrity tag. "Being a star all depends on who you talk to," she claims. "I had a director say to me the other day, in relation to Brad Pitt, 'Brad's a star, and one day you'll be a...I mean, you already are a star!'" She peals with laughter. "He was so embarrassed, but I thought it was the funniest thing anyone ever said to me. Just the whole thought that i would be offended is so ridiculous. I wanted to say to him, 'Why do you think that's what everyone wants?'"
Ok, so she doesn't want fame (or any more than she already has), she's not that interested in box-office figures or awards, so what exactly is it that keeps Blanchett in the industry? Refreshingly, it seems to be that most old-fashioned of motivations: the acting. While the last couple of years have seen her rack up an extraordinary number of films, she still believes "it's the things you say no to that are a huge part of forming your career". And she's certainly made interesting choices, particularly for such a young and gorgeous actress. For instance, having her head shaved for her part in the hauntingly beautiful Tom Tykwer film, Heaven. "I didn't have any reservations," she says breezily (somehow, you can't imagine Julia Roberts saying the same thing). "People always think you're being coy when you say this, but I really don't think of things in terms of career moves. Therefore maybe I haven't got the sort of career that people understand." She also scoffs at the notion that there might ever be rivalry between herself and other actresses: "When things come up, I don't ask, 'Who else is up for it?'I think if you participated in that kind of stuff, which obviously goes on behind the velvet curtain, it's just soul-destroying, The whole public nature of getting up there and embarrassing yourself is difficult enough, without te added pressure of that kind of Olympic competition."

It has been said that Johnny Depp, while considered one of the finest actors of his generation, doesn't necessarily have the power to 'greenlight' a film, to make it an attractive proposition for all concerned. Why? Because his choices are too left-field. Does Blanchett hold a similar place in the Hollywood firmament? "There may be things I've accepted that other people would have turned down," she says when asked about how she chooses roles. "I have an absolute ball doing Bandits, for instance, which I loved as a film. Although it's difficult, obviously, for me to be objective about it." She reflects for a moment. "You know, I think most of my films get seen on video!" She laughs, a wonderful, deep, contagious laugh.

"I don't think I've ever done anything out of panic that there wouldn't be any other roles," she says. "It's not a healthy way to work. There's just too much to do." Right now, though, it's doing nothing that's appealing to her the most. "I've got a couple of months off, which is absolute heaven," she says gleefully. "Dash is just so completely engrossing. Until we had him there was always that thing of literally being able to pick up and go; your sense of friendship and place becomes very mobile. But now, with a child, we have to think more than a year ahead. It's not so much now because he's stills just playinf with saucepans and happy to go anywhere. But when he begins to make connections with people and miss them, we'll have to make the decision about where we want home to be."

It's clear what occupies Blanchett's priorities right now: she describes getting together with other mothers like "Trekkies, part of a massive cult" and that what surprised her most about parenthood was "the velocity at which the love travels". But never fear, she's not ready to slip off the big screen for quite a while yet, with two more Lord of the Rings episodes to come and the title role in the drama about Irish investigative journalist, Veronica Guerin, to be released next year. "Of course, I'm ambitious for experience," she says, "I'm just not ruthless. I've been pretty lucky in that I've been able to choose the things that interest me. They've never been stepping stones to somewhere else." Pictures that came with this article: