by Paul Fischer
by Paul Fischer
Cate
Blanchett would rather be on a film set than the perennial publicity
trail. Doing 
interviews,
from the outset of her career, has never been her favourite pastime. "I hate
it and I don't think I'm very good at it." Fiercely protective, she is accompanied
to this interview by not one, but two publicists -- perhaps all part her recent
escalation into the world of movie stardom. A lot has changed a lot since first
working in films back in Australia. "The more you do, the more confident
you are in some areas, and then the more unconfident you are in others, so it's
kind of odd. I think I'm actually happier. And I have no idea if that's got to
do with where I am personally or professionally. I'm not as pessimistic, maybe."
Best known as for
her title role in Elizabeth, Blanchett's familiar long flowing hair has
been severely cut short for the sake of art. "Giovanni Ribisi and I finished
another film with Tom [Run Lola Run] Tykwer called Heaven where we had
to shave our heads for part of it and it's only now just growing back", she
says laughingly." While so many bemoan the lack of strong or interesting
roles for women, Blanchett has been able to devour a variety of characters in
so many distinct films, avoiding the trap of going from Elizabeth to instant
lead star. "After Elizabeth, I thought I could see a path that was
being laid out for me that I could step onto, and I knew myself well enough to
realize I wasn't ready to step on it. And I'm not there yet. People think I'm
there because all of the pieces are in place, but I want to try and do different
things and play different kinds of parts. I couldn't have found a better antidote
for myself after playing Elizabeth than the character I played in Pushing
Tin, which was totally different." As different as Meredith in Talented
Mr Ripley, or Lola in Sally Potter's upcoming The Man who Cried, or
the very different Galadriel, Queen of the Elves, in the Lord of the Rings
trilogy. Or of course there's the Southern widow in Sam Raimi's The
Gift. "I've always been very choosy in what 
I
do", Blanchett explains slowly, further conceding "that it's always
a risk doing film." Yet in clarifying the divergence of her choices, Blanchett
adds that she has "always gone into things knowing why I was making it, even
if it was just to have a great time. After Elizabeth, I just wasn't interested
in repeating what I had done, hence the smaller stories."
Despite its high profile cast and director, The Gift, directed by Sam Raimi and co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, is one of those small stories that Blanchett was eager to seek out. Set in rural Georgia, The Gift is the story of Annie Wilson (Blanchett), a widowed psychic with three young sons. To make money, she offers psychic readings to people in the town where she lives, but the more conservative members of the community dislike her because of it. Things only get worse when Annie begins having visions about the darker sides of her neighbours' lives and a local woman is murdered. Though it has been year of psychic-themed thrillers (The Sixth Sense and What Lies Beneath), Blanchett sees The Gift as being unique, refusing to draw comparisons with its recent, high profile predecessors. "I didn't try and compare this to anything else, or this character from those. It was important for me to try and unlock what was in the script." That, she says, is her first connection with the project. "I loved this script, thought it was very unusual and couldn't quite pin it down. The trouble with a lot of films at the moment, is that you enjoy them while you're watching them, but they don't leave you with anything." The Gift, she argues, is unusual "because there are so many threads to it and so many amazing characters."
A challenge on The Gift was playing a Southern character, "and not falling into a cliché. We wanted to make it real." Cate further describes her own character as very quiet and incredibly private. "She's also very locked down and very shut off, because of the fact that she has not dealt with her grief, of her being a survivor who could not foresee her husband's death. Being shut off means it's a lot easier for her to listen to other people's problems rather than to listen to what's going on in her own life." It's a predicament that the actress can relate to, she says. "I've seen that happen for sure. It's difficult for young men or women, when their spouses die and they're left with children, and their relationship with the children then becomes incredibly painful, because they remind them of the family life they had with someone that they loved."
As
unique an experience it was playing a Southern widow with psychic abilities,
so
too was working on the highly elaborate and much anticipated Lord of the Rings.
"Both of these films were uncharted territory", such as in the case
of Rings, dealing with blue screen special effects and prosthetics. "It
was like stepping into a video game for me." She talks with childish enthusiasm
about the experience of playing Galadriel in the trilogy. "I basically did
it so I could have the ears", she says smilingly. "They were so sweet,
because they actually made little bronze castings of my ears. I loved all of
that
stuff." Yet again, Blanchett adopts a royal posture, though this time, she
is not queen of England but queen of the Elves, a different proposition. "She's
incredibly different from Elizabeth, beginning with those ears." She also
has to speak like an elf. "Tolkien actually wrote a language called Elfish,
and there are, to my astonishment, Elfish experts, people who speak fluent
Elfish." In the film, she does speak Elfish, and describes the language
as
"really beautiful, similar to Welsh and a melange of other Celtic languages."
During the course of this interview, Blanchett was in the midst of doing night shoots for Bandits, which again will represent a different side to the talented actress. "It's this kind of rollicking romantic comedy, about these two bank robbers, based on two real guys. I play a woman whose life isn't functioning very well and she forces them to take her hostage. She falls in love with both of them - kind of like a ménage-a-trois." Now that she is working alongside Bruce Willis, perhaps she feels that she's made it - at least in Hollywood. "He definitely has a lot of trailers plus my trailer's bigger and I even have a DVD player and a cappuccino machine."
Yet these trappings of Hollywood have not meant that she relinquishes any of her initial acting ideals. "I don't recall why I wanted to act in the first place. Even at drama school, I didn't feel I was necessarily going to continue acting. I've always thought of it as slightly frivolous and I assumed I'd go back to university to study architecture. But in my third year I did some work with a woman named Lindy Davies that seemed to me to have real value. It drew together the strands of what was happening around us and we were able to blurt it back at the audience. It seemed relevant, I guess. So I thought I'd give acting a go for a few years, and then I kept working, and that's addictive." Blanchett will return to where it all began: The Australian stage, admitting that "I hope to do a play there very soon", and she is about to work with Gillian Armstrong who directed her in Oscar & Lucinda. "We're working on an adaptation of Charlotte Gray with Billy Crudup. I'm very excited about it."
Cate Blanchett may be terrified of the press, but there is a resigned composure about her. Here is someone who remains intensely passionate about what she does, and as she conceded in an earlier interview, remains happy on many levels. "I've always been terrified of being content, because it seems such a stodgy or smug place to be stuck in. But, yes, l am happy in a sense that I am not frightened of momentary disappointments or depressions. That means a lot of things bounce off me today that wouldn't have bounced off me a few years ago. It's a difficult question because happiness is a thing you don't necessarily want to admit to-you don't want it to go away once you're experiencing it. Actually, I find the less I think about happiness, the happier I am. The amount of energy you spend on it could run quite a few light bulbs."