Walking on Water

Oscar winner Cate Blanchett returns to the Australian cinema to star in Rowan Woods' deeply compelling 'Little Fish', a darkly haunting story of addiction, love and redemption. Filmink's Harper Sloan

From: Filmink, 2005-08-26
Date added: 2005-08-29

back

"That's just a way of saying that my performance worked. And that's fantastic and you hope that sort of interest will translate to the box office. But I try not to think about it too much. It's in the lap of the Gods. But if someone wants to give me one..."

Back in 1998 when Filmink interview Cate Blanchett for the first time on the release of her breakthrough film 'Elizabeth', the young actress was talking about winning an Oscar as if it was a shimmering, faraway thing with the texture of a mirage. Like all good actresses, the threat of an Oscar nomination practivally came up every time Blanchett made a high-profile film. The whispers started with 'Elizabeth' (for which she scared a nod, but was beaten by - in one of the Academy's great all-time travesties - Gwyneth Paltrow for 'Shakepeare in Love'), rose again with 'The Gift', fluttered for 'Charlotte Gray', 'The Missing' and 'Veronica Guerin', and finally turned into a low-abb rumble that developed into a full-scale scream for her portrayal of Katherine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's 'The Aviator'.

"I'm not so grandiose to think of myself that way," Blanchett replied when asked if she felt the weight of Australia on her shoulders after picking up the Oscar. "I think there's a lot going on in Australia other than me winning an Oscar. But I think my mum will be very pleased."

For the 35-year-old actress, it's been a seemingly straight roll ride to the top of the heap. Born into a well-off family, Blanchett attended the stiff upper lip Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne, and not surprisingly was the school drama captain. She graduated from NIDA in 1992, and thn won almost instant acclaim on stage, but really made her mark with a damaging turn opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet's inflammatory 'Oleanna' for the Sydney Theatre Company.

"I think on of the best things that ever happened to me was coming out of NIDA and not working straight away," the actress saus of the post-study career. "I didn't have an expectation that work would continue. So there's always a sense that I never want to be come complacent. Obviously I've worked really hard and I love what I do, but you just have to take every job and do it as best you can."

Blanchett's first major film role came with the 51-minute ethereal mystery 'Parklands', where she appeared opposite local legend Tony Martin ('Blue Murder', 'Wildside') for debut director Kathryn Millard. "I really liked Cate's work in the theatre," says the filmmaker, who would go on to helm 'Travelling Light'. "The kind of detail that her work had was great, and I thought that she would be really good for the role. We talked about character and story because it's quite a mosaic of a film and I wanted everybody to understand where their role fitted into the structure. I wasn't willing to change the script because I felt it was quite delicate and precise and it wasn't up for grabs. Cate worked well within that."

In 1997, Blanchett made three films in Australia: she was a standout supporting player in Bruce Beresford's WW2 drama 'Paradise Road', and played second fiddle to Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor in 'Thank God He Met Lizzie'. Her first really big film, however, came with Gillian Armstrong's 'Oscar and Lucinda', and adaptation of Peter Carry's picaresque novel that would see her star opposite highly fancied British import Ralph Fiennes, who had received Oscar nominations for 'Schindler's List' and 'The English Patient'.

"I think it would have been very frightening for Cate to act in her first lead role with a twice Oscar nominated actor, and I thinkshe dealt with it really well," said director Gillian Armstrong. "When they acted together, there was tremendous electricity and Ralph knew this and was comfortable working with a great actress. You can see that on screen - they play off each other. Emotionally she probably tossed and turned at night thinking she was terrible, but I think she coped really well."

It was 'Oscar and Lucinda' that would see Blacnhett become a blip on the international radar. Before any of her films had really made a mark in any substantial box office or commercial way, the buzz had started. One of the first to catch it was British director Mike Newell, who ultimately cast the actress as an American housewife opposite John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie in the hectic wife swapping comedy-drama 'Pushing Tin'.

"The only thing I could see was 'Oscar and Lucinda', and frankly, that didn't help me at all," Newell said candidly. "The casting director had said that she was one of the coming events, this girl. When I saw 'Oscar and Lucinda', it was 2000 miles from what I was looking for. But because so many people were telling me that she was one of the best things around, I kept her in my mind."

Not surprisingly, when Newell saw Shekhar Kapur's masterful 'Elizabeth', Blanchett's first major international role, he flipped his lid. As The Virgin Queen, the seemingly inexperienced (in cinematic terms) Cate Blanchett gave a performance of such quiet intensity that she was immediately thrust into the golden circle of credible actors and onto the Oscars nominees list.

"She so clearly picked th whole film up and carried it along with her," said Newell. "I was really impressed by that. Then I met her and she said what nobody else I had met for that part in 'Pushing Tin' had said: "What I'm really interested in being is a housewife. I would like to be a person who is entirely content and whose horizons are very limited. She then walks into this wall full of surprises." I hadn't heard that before. You know what Americans are like - the actresses I saw for the part wanted to be studying at night school for a degree in nuclear physics. They want to be more, because to them housewives are boring. But Cate wasn't like that. She just wanted to create a picture of a happy woman. She was great because of that and that's what hooked me.

It was her role in 'Pushing Tin' - a film dosed with the tabloid-ready presence of Thornton and Jolie - that gave Blanchett her first real taste of the Hollywood system and how it works. "A reported asked me at a junket in L.A. if people would be telling me what to do now that I'd made an international film and had been nominated for an Oscar," Blanchett told Filmink in 1998, "I was horrified. But the great thing about my agents both in Australia and in America is that they know that if I don't like the script or I don't get on with the director, then I won't do something. Frankly, the agents haven't really earned that much from me! There are jobs that I could have done, but I just don't think I'm that greedy. It's easy for me to say that now, but in five years time when the offers have dried up, I may be in an entirely different situation. I'm not saying I'm completely pure, but at the moment..."

Blanchett, however, did remain pretty much pure, or maybe a slightly off-white shade of pale. She might not have been a box office draw, but Blanchett's cochet was undeniable, and thought she made the occasional bad film, she only worked with the world's finest directors: Anothony Minghella (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Sam Raimi (The Gift), Barry Levinson (Bandits), Lasse Hallstrom (The Shipping News), Tom Tykwer (Heaven), Joel Schumacher (Veronica Guerin), Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), Ron Howard (The Missing), Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic) and Martin Scorsese (The Aviator).

With these films, Blanchett really proved her skills, working in a variety of styles, and constantly modulating her body, voice and accent in striking and different ways.

"What I love about Cate Blanchett is her chameleon-like quality, and the fact that in each film she is someone completely different," director Jim Jarmusch - who memorably cast the actress in dual roles in 'Coffee and Cigarettes' - told Filmink, "I've seen some films because she's in there, rather than because of an interesting in the film itself. After watching the first minute or two, I forget that it's Cate and I'm interested in the character."

For Ron Howard - who directed Blanchett in 'The Missing' - it was the actress's grounded sensitivity that appealed the most. "She has a natural quality, and also in just talking to her, I also felt that she was going to approach the film with a creative appetite for what was true. There was also a kind of courage in her wanting her character to be feared, and clearly damaged in certain ways - I though that was a great instinct on her part."

Though never a spotlight hog, Blanchett still became a minor tabloid target, with papers baited by her low-key marriage to playwright Andrew Upton and their occasional social appearances. Doing press, however, has become part of the grind for the actress. "I don't mind talking about work," she told Filmink on the release of 'The Missing', "I find discussing the efforts that go into a film interesting conversation to have, but when you end up talking about clothes rather than the work, it does become a little frustrating. I suppose it depends on the extent you want to wholesale your life to get somewhere. As a species, we're constantly under surveillance in various ways: the presence of the media is not just for people who work in the film industry."

Now an Oscar winner and marquee name in Hollywood, Blanchett delivers a striking one-two punch. Firstly, she's returned to Australia to make a local film for the first time since 'Oscar and Lucinda'. Secondly, she's kicked the "curse" of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which has previously struck down the likes of Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei end-career. Her secret? Turning in a performance more bold and daring than the one that scored her the award in the first place. While some questioned the nummered nature of her Katherine Hepburn approximation in 'The Aviator', Blanchett is loose, natural and wholly believable in 'Little Fish', imbuing her character Tracy Heart with a beaten lendlessness.

For Blanchett, this is a very different role to dissapear into. Tracy heart is an ex-junkie doing it tought: her brother - troubled amputee Ray(Martin Henderson) - is caught up in the drug trade; her weakened, emaciated father figure(Hugo Weaving) is a broken down heroin addict; and her ex-boyfriend Johnny(Dastin Nguyen) has returned after four years in Canada. For the incredibly fragile Tracy, the past is about to catch up with her big time...

"Being such a white-bread, middle-class girl and not having any experience myself, I needed to do a lot of research," Blanchett had said of 'Little Fish'. "I mean, I understand the nature of having an addictive personality, and I've had friends who've gone through that, but what I found fascinating about Tracy as an addict, is tht she didn't fit neatly into the model."

Director Rowan Woods has developed the laugh-minded project over a number of years with Cate Blanchett in mind. The actress had been a fan of her debut film 'The Boys', and the pair had always endeavoured to work together. "Cate is someone who I admire as an actor almost more than anyone on the planet," Woods says with obvious enthousiasm. "She's got this amazing craft and this incredible emotional depth, and she's smart and down to earth. She's a very industrious actor who spends a lot of time finding the voice of a character and the movement of a character. With 'Little Fish', she's playing the role that she has never played: a contemporary Australian girl of her own age group. She quite often plays above her age and does these roles in quite exotic contexts, so it's unusual to see her get down and dirty in a contemporary suburban role. We treated her preparation for the role as if it was an exotic character."

Blanchett more than agrees. "You can't easily inhabit a role just because you come from the same country as the character you're playing," she says, "Australia has regional accents particular to specific communities. I had to find Tracy Heart's voice, her movement, and her place in the world. Both Rowan and I entered into th process with the same approach that we would have if Tracy Heart had been a German character. Rowan's meticulous with research, which I really warmed to because making a film takes a long time and you constantly have to have things re-shape your imagination over the course of the film."

But for Blanchett, that kind of research has to be buried within the performance itself. "You can't be precious," she says. "In the end, people don't want to see a mechanical performance. The skill is to trust that all that stuff sticks underneath the playing of the role; otherwise it becomes computer generated in a lot of ways. It just becomes a technical exercise that in not dramatically interesting."

Blanchett, however, is always interesting - no matter what character she;s playing. In the case of 'Little Fish', the interest from the audience will probably come from the fact that the long-time-gone actress is finally working on local sail again. Though Blanchett is always supportive of her home country - she's the parton of the Australian Film Festival in London, and was recently at the Arts Biennale in Venice representing Australia - it's never a pressing point for her.

"She isn't 'Rah, rah, Australian!' for the sake of our industry," Woods says. "She's just searching for projects that she wants to do and that she thinks are worth doing." But more than pretty much anyone else, Blacnhett is in a unique position to rationalise as why Australians seem to be doing so well internationally at the moment. "I guess it's in our blood," she says. "It's what we understand. What I loved about growing up in Australia is that it installed in me a healthy curiousity about the rest of the worls. You don't grow up thinking you're the center of the universe, like you do if you grow up in New York for instance. Australians travel a lot, and that's a huge contributing factor. They come in at the back door, they go in quietly, they do their work, and then all of a sudden people say: 'Where did you come from?' And you say, 'Well, I've been here for yers. And I'm just doing my work'."

Like Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Eric Bana and other locals, Cate Blanchett never has an inside track in Hollywoss. But back 1998, it all seemed as simple. "I saw the Hollywood sign for the first time last year," Blanchett said way back then, perhaps not even imagining what was to come...

Little Fish is released on September 8.

back