Audience With the Queen: Q&A With Cate Blanchett

By Angie Argabrite

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A-list Aussie Cate Blanchett is one of the most talented -- and versatile -- actresses working today. In her two current projects, she shows a range that is, quite literally, breathtaking. In 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age,' she stands out for her powerful depiction of the Virgin Queen (her second portrayal; the first garnered her an Oscar nomination), and in the offbeat 'I'm Not There,' she's one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan. Both performances are being lauded by critics, which should be no surprise, given that she's racked up two Oscar nominations and one win, four Golden Globes noms and one win, as well as countless critics' awards and noms, all in just the 10 years since she came on the international scene in the '97 drama 'Paradise Road.' Blanchett opens up with us about her two-time co-star Brad Pitt, how she manages work and family ... and who has a restraining order against her.

Moviefone: Hi! I think we only have ...
Cate Blanchett: Two-and-a-half minutes? [laughs]

MF: Something like that. Let's jump right in. Was it easier for you to play Elizabeth again since you've done it before, or was it more difficult thinking that you didn't want to do the same thing again?
CB: I don't think I'd be capable of doing the exact same thing again. I think that part of my reticence to jumping in immediately after making the first one was that I needed to know there was something else to say. I knew that there was something else to say about Elizabeth, it goes without saying that she is endlessly fascinating as you've seen from her reign and the period, but did I have anything else to offer? Once enough time had passed, it became possible to make a film that was both epic about the Spanish Armada and the political confrontation that Elizabeth faced while also dealing with the aging process, you know with 10 years on. Hopefully I'm a more mature presence.

MF: You've played a lot of real-life people: Elizabeth, Katharine Hepburn, Bob Dylan, Veronica Guerin. Do you approach it differently, playing a real person rather than someone who is entirely fictional?
CB: Well, with Veronica Guerin, there's not a sense of ownership of her image, of her voice, the way she walked, of who she was. What she stood for is iconic within Dublin. But in terms of her presence on the world stage, it's not at all comparable to the level of ownership of someone like Katharine Hepburn, so to play someone like Katharine Hepburn in the same medium for which she is so iconically known, I mean that's a challenge that you have to liberate yourself from and also accept from day one that no matter what you do, you aren't going to please everybody. There're going to be people with Elizabeth who say "that's not what happened"; "that's not the series of events." Therefore the filmmaker who tells that story is a really vital part of that process. With Bob Dylan, I was liberated from the get-go because I'm a woman for starters, and we're all playing an aspect of a really mercurial personality and an incredibly vast musical journey. Already there's that huge liberation involved if only for the fact that I'm not even male. He was very androgynous at the time I was playing him. I think it's really insightful of Todd to have cast a woman in that kind of incarnation of his musical journey.

MF: Did you get to meet Dylan?
CB: Nooo, nooo. The thing is you can't orchestrate these encounters with anybody that you admire. The best possible way is to work alongside people because then you've got something in common. But his manager was really supportive, and certainly the full versions of all the press conferences he gave on that European tour were really useful.

MF: You've worked with Brad Pitt twice.
CB: I have. Would do it again.

MF: So you've seen up close the level of celebrity that he has. Do you find that sort of fascinating or frightening? Would you want that level of celebrity?
CB: No. I like Brad as a human being and I think there's an unhealthy level of media attention on things that are utterly private and really ultimately insignificant compared with what's going on in the world. I'm not interested in filling my head with junk.

MF: Are you done with 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' or are you still working on it?
CB: They are still going, and I wrapped on Saturday. It was a hoot.

MF: Do you want to reveal any plot points?
CB: Oh god, do I want to be shot at dawn? Is that what you are asking me? No, no, I can't. I've never worked on anything so top secret. You know why that particular series of films is so loved and there is such an intense curiosity about them. The only other experience I've had that's in a small way similar is the 'Lord of the Rings' frenzy. It's more difficult from when the first ['Indiana Jones'] was made, whatever it was, 1979; you could actually probably keep a secret and there was no expectation that something could come out, and the expectation grows with every film. And with the Internet, it's really difficult to keep anything secret, and personally I don't like to know anything about a film before it comes out. I like for those things to be secret, so I kind of applaud their attempts to leave some mystique.

MF: And you don't want any lawsuits.
CB: No, no I want my children to know their mother and not get to know her behind bars.

MF: I loved your cameo in 'Hot Fuzz' by the way. I recognized your voice and I interviewed Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and asked them about it; Simon said that you have the kind of beauty that can make a man cry, and wee himself.
CB: [Laughs] That's a very attractive quality in a man. Urination on sight.

MF: And Nick said he thinks that you fancy him a bit.
CB: A bit? A bit is an understatement. He's put out a restraining order on me.

MF: How do you manage to be a mother and to seem to work all the time; you are always on a project or doing press for a movie. How do you balance that?
CB: I think it seems that way because there is so much media now. I mean, I'm hardly in the media compared to some people, and you don't have to do anything to get in the media these days. Do you know what I mean? I think it appears quite differently to how it actually is. But it's a juggle, and I'm lucky to have a supportive, involved partner, and my kids have been little enough to travel. Now they are getting to the age where they need to settle and get into their own peer group. And as their needs change, the way we operate as a family changes.

MF: Did that play into your decision to become a co-artistic director of the Sydney Theater Company?
CB: It kind of happened in parallel really. We were living in Brighton and loving it in England, and then we were thinking our parents are getting older, we feel more culturally connected to Australia and responsible for what goes on there politically ... it's where you're from. And you start thinking about that stuff when you have one child and even more when you have two children, so we were wanting to move back to Australia anyway and then the offer came and it sort of just clinched it for us.

MF: Is your life going to change with this? Are you going to travel less, work less?
CA: I think we all have to travel less, really. We all travel too much really, but yeah, the last two years have been extraordinary. Last year I did two films and a play and that was amazing. I couldn't turn down the 'Golden Age' or the Bob Dylan project or playing Hedda Gabler in New York. But you can't do that every year. So running the company is really an incredible responsibility and a huge long-term challenge. It doesn't mean that I never want to make a film again, so if someone asks me, I just have to be more organized about how I work it.

MF: You won the Best Actress award at Venice. And it was just announced that you are going to get the Modern Master Award at the Santa Barbara film festival.
CB: Am I?

MF: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
CB: I'll check on that and get back to you.

MF: Oh, here it is, "Cate Blanchett will be honored with the Modern Master Award at the 2008 Santa Barbara International Film Festival." It'll be January 26.
CB: Geez, I better get a frock. That's cool. Thank you very much. I'll put that in my diary right now.

MF: Do you think about awards at all when you are looking at roles, thinking about roles?
CB: No, that is obscene. You can read a brilliant script but unless it rubs up against a whole lot of brilliant components and hits an audience at the right time, you don't know whether it's going to connect with them or whether the film is going to work. I mean it's not a mathematical equation, it's sort of like a chemistry experiment, you just don't know what the outcome is going to be. And going in like that trying to control the outcome is kind of revolting.

MF: Your roles are so challenging, so many of them. You've shaved your head...
CB: So did Britney Spears.

MF: [Laughs] Well, that was an entirely different role. But do you always go after challenging roles or do people come to you with challenging roles?
CB: Maybe it's a bit of both. It's gotta be more than just looking for shock value or whatever, the project as a whole, sometimes it's the director, sometimes it's the other actor, sometimes it's the script, sometimes an idea in the script. It changes, but I couldn't think of a better antidote to playing Elizabeth the First than playing Bob Dylan ... how could you say no to that crazy offer?