Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchettis an Australian actress and theatre director. She has received international acclaim and many accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three British Academy Awards. Blanchett came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film Elizabeth, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award, and earned her first Academy Award for Best Actress nomination. Her...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth14 May 1969
CityMelbourne, Australia
CountryAustralia
I think if you're too embroiled in the need to relate too closely to the character, then you start to judge the character for the audience rather than to present it to the audience for their enjoyment and them to mull over the questions that the characters present.
A lot of people are frightened by old age - by being around people who are, basically, on their way out - but I'm fascinated by it. It's an amazing thing to be around someone who has had a life well lived.
I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her, and there's so much speculation about her - was she a hermaphrodite? She's so mythologised, and there are a lot of images of her.
I think there is a long exploration in American drama of women in particular who, by force of circumstances or because they are predisposed to, choose fantasy over reality.
Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company.
The Oscar is very beautiful, utterly mesmeric, but I don't feel any more important because I have won one. It doesn't mean I'm any better than anyone.
We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!
We've enshrined the purity, sanctity, value, and importance of bringing children into the world, yet we don't discuss death. There used to be an enshrined period where mourning was a necessary part of going through the process of grieving; death wasn't considered morbid or antisocial. But that's totally gone.
When a gift is difficult to give away, it becomes even more rare and precious, somehow gathering a part of the giver to the gift itself.
We're constantly morphing into different outward manifestations of ourselves. That's what I find curious about people.
I think our Western society is very much about, 'Tuck your head in; make sure you're safe. Don't rock the boat.'
The more you can remove the obstacles between you and the world as a woman, the easier and simpler life becomes.
There are very few issues that lie specifically in one region now. Polio in Syria doesn't affect Syria alone. I don't think any issue can ever be isolated into local politics these days, because we all know too much.
When I came out of drama school, I was in a shared house in Sydney.