Cate Blanchett: “I’m not afraid to change and grow old”

Blanchet. My last name is pronounced “Blanchit”. This phrase – in response to my “Miss Blanchett” – she says with some pressure, although her whole appearance is the denial of raised tones. For example, Kate … yes, Blanchet considers herself a “quite colorless blonde” and behaves accordingly – it is not striking. Therefore, she loves colors gray and black, and she sees the combination of black and white in a suit as really bright. Now she is dressed almost “brightly”: black and white herringbone trousers, the same vest, black shirt. However, on her feet – like an underline in the text – black pumps on blatantly high heels. And on the arm is a wide designer gold bracelet. What in the hotel in Manhattan where we are talking can be considered mimicry: gold on a black and white background is very Manhattan. It turns out, neither give nor take an ordinary resident of New York, prosperous, unremarkable …

She often laughs, not necessarily at jokes, sometimes at paradoxical thoughts. She can’t stand static and alternately turns from side to side in her swivel chair, then crosses her legs, then wiggles her elbows on the armrests. She never asks again, does not repeat the question, but immediately answers. She does not like ambiguity and wants to be taken literally, because she answers directly and bluntly. For the same reason, she insists that her name be pronounced correctly to avoid confusion.

She is Blanchet, not Blanchett. She is a person, not a role. She is a person, and only then an actress. She is she. And such – not conspicuous, unambiguous – she is alone.

Psychologies: You played fairy tale and real characters: the Queen of the Elves and Queen Elizabeth I, Katharine Hepburn and many others … Sometimes you even split into two in one frame, as in Coffee and Cigarettes – into a movie star and her loser cousin … That after all these incarnations you see when you look in the mirror?

Cate Blanchett: Myself. Always yourself. And thank God, I never had to run away from myself. Why, you can’t run away from yourself… Sometimes you know how to act, but you always act as you normally do. And I tend to follow a straight path, not to hide, not to build complex routes to my goal … And the very category of the goal is very doubtful for me.

That is, you did not strive to become an actress of the “first Hollywood echelon”, to be in the spotlight?

K. B.: No, I’m even glad that I haven’t reached that level of popularity where your private life becomes a kind of public performance. And again, I can do as I tend to. After all, I’m just a middle-class person, a girl who grew up, as we say in Australia, on white bread. With a very happy personal life. And that’s it.

And it is generally accepted that actors become people with a clear passion for self-expression or self-demonstration, or those who want to live many lives.

K. B.: About me, probably only the first. Self-expression. All my childhood I was running around with some school productions, but I was apparently too shy to appear in front of the public myself, openly. That is why I became very interested in radio. My grandmother used to listen to him all night long. Programs with “calls to the night air”. I fell asleep and sometimes woke up at night to these revelations: people told amazing stories about themselves and their loved ones, about amazing incidents that they read as signs of fate … And then at school I did a radio program – with “interviews” and “reports”: I brought from home a tape recorder and “ethereal” in this way.

How did your parents feel about this hobby?

K. B.: Mom and dad supported me, although they saw me more as a musician. But I got into theater. Once my school friend put on some play, I helped her. We studied at the Melbourne Methodist Women’s College, we didn’t have boys, and we did everything ourselves: we made the scenery and played male roles – this was Shakespeare’s theater in reverse … So, my friend, who staged the play, said very confidently: “The next you will bet!” I kept refusing, but I felt that something important had happened: someone definitely and firmly believed in me. I am still grateful to my friend (we are still friends today): she gave me such a … kick that threw me into a different state, changed my attitude towards myself. I guess I was ready for it. I was already practical then, and, you know, obsessed with independence and security.

Which is not very compatible with the image of a “girl who grew up on white bread”, from the middle class, a student of a private school.

K. B.: Probably, all this happened to me because of my mother, because of her experience. I was ten when my dad died. His death for many years, before the birth of my own children, was the main event of my life … That day I was sitting at the window and playing the piano, dad walked along the lawn in front of our house and waved goodbye to me … And that’s it. He died of a heart attack. I then drew my own conclusions from what happened. I decided that I really needed to say goodbye if you were going somewhere, because it might turn out that you were leaving forever. Mom sent me to the other end of the street for milk, I took the money and said goodbye to her in earnest, then said goodbye to everyone who was at that moment at home. If I, leaving, forgot something and had to return, the whole ritual was repeated. Strange, but neither my brother Bob, he is older, nor Genevieve, the younger sister, ever laughed at this strangeness of mine … Nobody laughed. Then, before the funeral, my sister and brother and I were left literally for a minute with my father’s colleagues. One of them took advantage of this moment and told us: “Guys, your mom is going to have hard times. You have to be very, very good.” I think this made me, in terms of relationships, to some extent a perfectionist … Mom was left alone with three children, she really had a hard time, and I tried to be good, correct, work for independence and safety – my own and loved ones. I entered the Faculty of Economics. Which was ridiculous back then. I have some kind of non-linear consciousness: numbers, numbers are contraindicated for me. And then the study of “features of cattle driving between Sydney and Gosport in the 60s of the XIX century” completely finished me off, and I left the university.

You said “security”. What does this mean for you?

K. B.: Now – at least some life guarantees, guarantees of relative calm … Of course, it is always relative, calm. And then, in my youth… Probably, it was mainly about my heightened susceptibility to intrusions into what is called the inner world. You know, I kept a diary all my childhood. I was 12 and it accidentally caught my brother’s eye. Bob couldn’t help but read it. And I said to myself: “I will never, never write again! No diaries.” As a result, over time, I started an electronic organizer. With a personal code – so that no one could read whose phone numbers I have recorded! I changed this code every day, without any system, got completely confused and ended it. But I remember that feeling – insecurity from the invasion.

Do you still adhere to the position of “being good in relationships with loved ones”?

K. B.: Do you mean my family? Husband? You know, other laws already apply here. It seems to me that the main thing here is sincerity, even the experience of our acquaintance speaks of this. Andrew and I met in some public place, he was with his then girlfriend, I knew her, and I really liked her. But Andrew and I didn’t like each other: he seemed arrogant to me, and I seemed cold and indifferent to him. But then we met again and again by chance, Andrew started talking about Turgenev, about “A Month in the Country” – a very subtle and very sad thing … And that’s it. That was enough. We got married very soon. That is, I want to say that I didn’t like him, he didn’t like me, but he shared his Turgenev with me and, it seems, then kissed … and everything was cleared up. We’ve been together for 10 years. And I always want him to be there. When I go to shoot, my family – Andrew, Dashiell and Roman – also leaves the place and goes with me. Thank God, Montessori school, where my children go, allows this.

You were so striving for independence – in such a situation do not you feel dependent?

K. B.: Is it bad to depend on love? Do you need independence from it?

Is independence synonymous with freedom for you?

K. B.: Freedom has no synonyms. Nobody can be free. A person can only be free internally – for example, free to feel what he really feels.

Have you ever met through an ad?

K. B.: Oh, I’ve always liked dating the old-fashioned way – in person and preferably by chance. True, one of my acquaintances got married very successfully, having advertised in the newspaper … In general, everything happens, there are no patterns.

None at all? For good and evil is not rewarded respectively? Is labor not rewarded?

K. B.: I live in a world where everything is relative. Work, success? What I considered to be my achievements, more than once ended up on the floor in the editing room – in the waste of the filming process. People whom we considered close can move away – not for some reason, but just life … Life is not a movie, the plot in it is much more difficult to trace, the motives of actions are sometimes hidden or false. The meaning is only in your personal feeling – everything is relative, except for the feeling of happiness. Or misfortune. I’m talking about feelings, not circumstances.

Therefore, you value not the result, but rather the process?

K. B.: Certainly. For example, I love shooting, rehearsals, the whole process of “making” a film. It’s like a good conversation at a dinner party – witty, and although it can be about something sad, it brings joy. You leave the table – from the film – having learned something new about people, about life …

How did you feel when you received the Oscar, the highest honor in your business? Joy? Feeling that the main thing has been achieved?

K. B.: Rather, relief: well, thank God, you can no longer want it! Before, I kept thinking: well, why all this fuss around the Oscars! Okay, award-winning films can make more box office, but the actors are so worried! And then she got herself into this madness. Who needs the fuss around the Oscars? Yes to my mom! She hurt me so much! And I was rooting for her. But I never wanted to be Another Big Hollywood Star. I sometimes look at actresses in Hollywood, in New York – they are, like a moth, beaten with fear. Fear of growing old, ceasing to be attractive. Hence the botox. Botox is fear injected with a syringe… Dear ones, death doesn’t become any less inevitable because your faces are still! The wonderful actress Rosemary Harris told me that in her sixties there was a fantastic demand for her. She still couldn’t understand what was the matter, but then one casting assistant revealed to her a terrible secret: actresses over 60 do not look sixty! They threw all their strength into the struggle for youth, and there is no one to play the old ladies! And I decided: I came to the cinema for a long time and I’m not going to remain unchanged.

Are you planning your life?

K. B.: Both of our sons were happy accidents! Andrew and I, individually, just wanted to experience what marriage, family, is like. And it is also a happy accident that the family turned out. But now – a paradox – I would not want accidents. Relationships need planning, I’m convinced of that. And for me this is the number one priority – relationships in our family.

It is known that they are strengthened by traditions. Do you have family traditions?

K. B.: Our family is still, perhaps, too young for traditions. But Christmas is. All those games of flouring the floor so that Santa’s reindeer have a place to land… I think Andrew and I have more fun with it than the kids. Probably because with each Christmas, the moment is getting closer and closer when they suddenly say: “You are lying to me.” And more valuable every day, as long as they trust you completely, absolutely.

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