She is a record holder: two Oscars, three Golden Globes. Kate started acting in her 30s and became a star for two decades. All this time she has been married to one man, they have three sons and a daughter. Blanchett has acted in more than 50 films, balancing them with theater. Now Kate is 49, and she is one of the most sought-after actresses. At the same time, he believes that the most stupid thing in life is to count. Be it success or failure.
Having made calculations of the victories and accomplishments of the interlocutor, I cannot stop. Now I think something different. Third Martini! She ordered a third martini and is finishing it. But he retains even intonation, soberness of assessments and accuracy of reactions. And still slightly dangles under the bar stool with a foot in a beige boat on an unthinkable stiletto. She didn’t spill a drop on a white shirt and beige trousers and doesn’t lean on the bar … Although it’s not a sin to lean on this bar – it’s 300 years old, it’s made of black granite and has been preserved since the middle of the XNUMXth century, when the Hotel du Vin was built in Royal Tunbridge Wells, where Blanchett made an appointment for me, not far from her new home in Crowborough.
And here we are sitting in an old, old hotel and a non-drunk Cate Blanchett looks at me with a clear look through her pink-rimmed clown glasses with blue lenses. She says that she lived in England for a long time, then returned home to Australia and there … she missed the rains, heavy drops bending the branches of English trees, the fog creeping along the lowlands, and the desperate sun that breaks through the greens exactly as Constable wrote. Constable for her is not “a prominent representative of romanticism in painting.”
“Constable is a realist!” she says. But it’s so strange to hear all this from an actress who, it would seem, is attached to the sultry Los Angeles, who grew up in Australia, does not part with her and considers herself Australian.
Psychologies: Still, why England? Your whole life – this is clear – passes beyond the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean …
Cate Blanchett: Here you understand the story… We chose England because we don’t work here. The thing is, I’m for the seams. For the fact that between life and work there was a border, a seam. Since the late 1990s, we spent almost 10 years in Brighton, an hour from London, my career was then gaining momentum, but it was only thanks to living in Brighton that we were able to have children. In London, or in Los Angeles, or in Sydney, we would simply be swallowed up by work – both me and Andrew (the husband of the actress, playwright Andrew Upton. – Note ed.).
Later we moved to Sydney – I was offered to lead the Sydney Theater Company, the main theater in Australia. It was an amazing time, I was doing what I love the most – the stage, the repertoire … But I immediately noticed how this important seam for me was disappearing – between work and the area where it was just me and all mine: children, Andrew, sister , brother, mother. Without this zone, there is no me as an actress, there are my “mines”, a raw material base. Energy is from there. For me it’s like this: if you live by work, there is nowhere to take strength from.
So work is not life? Red carpets, movie promotion tours, this is our interview – not your life?
Well, the red carpet is a kind of women’s sport, a competition in decolletage and styles of dresses … But not everyone is fond of sports. But if you answer seriously, then … They say that there is only one life. Not only in the sense that it is given only once, but also because everything together is life, it is one. I disagree. I have two lives. And ideally they shouldn’t overlap.
It is important for public people to stand on the ground, not to break away from reality
That’s why I don’t understand famous people who lead Twitter. It turns out that they insist that this, presented to the public, is what they are. There is something unhealthy about this, I think. This leads to someone’s envy – after all, there are red carpets and moments of happiness. And you yourself involuntarily begin to count likes … And it is important for public people to stand on the ground, not to break away from reality.
Likes and aahs of fans can quickly deprive healthy self-esteem. And in general – there is so much exhibitionism, self-demonstration … I don’t even understand selfies. No really, young people posting selfies to show off how cool they are… In short, it’s not my job to judge them, it’s my job to stay away
Ocean’s girlfriend
Cate Blanchett has always played solo. And on the threshold of her 50th birthday, she had to join the choir, the ladies’ ensemble “8 Ocean’s Friends”. The stars have teamed up to make a crystal-female spin-off of an adventurous comedy about Ocean’s friends, the cunning robbers.
The motor of the enterprise here is the sister of the seductive Danny Ocean, one flesh, one boiling blood (Sandra Bullock). And the perpetrators of the robbery (by the way, it should be committed during the most feminine of the social events in New York – the famous Met Gala, the main event in the fashion industry, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) – only women.
Moreover, each of them has earned the right to be Ocean’s girlfriend by contributing to the on-screen fight against sexism, and Blanchett’s contribution here is not the most significant. She only mocked weak femininity in her Oscar-winning Jasmine. Whether it’s Bullock’s business – she played female power 20 years ago in the “Network”, where her lonely heroine opposed the ruthless male state.
Or Rihanna, embodying female independence with one of her radical sex appeal. Or Anne Hathaway, Catwoman, the evil genius of Batman himself. Not to mention Helena Bonham Carter – the Black Queen from “Alice in Wonderland” … True, this choir sang harmoniously under the direction of a man, director of “Girlfriends …” Garry Ross. But it was he who once made The Hunger Games – a hymn to the strength of the girl’s spirit and body.
And how can you stay away when you already have two teenagers in your family, and the youngest son is about to join their ranks?
Well, the seam is also important here. Children are love and responsibility, but from a certain age they have the right to make their own decisions. And our parenting job is to prepare them to think about these decisions of theirs. Look, we can’t do more. It’s a fact. It’s impossible to feed them all the time. And it is not necessary, it is humiliating for both parties.
This is your answer to the traditional question of a successful woman with her family: “How do you manage to combine …”?
Oh I hate this question! I even hate when it is asked not to me, but to some other woman! No one ever asks about it, for example, my husband, although he is also a working father with four children. This question is never asked to men, only to women. Because this is what is prescribed for us – to raise children, and the rest should supposedly go sideways … But in general, yes. This is my answer to it. Work and family are combined if you do not set yourself impossible tasks.
My slogan: try and don’t guess what will come of it
I like everything that is connected with my motherhood – I loved breast pumps, and now here are parent meetings. And I try to be a good mother – responsible, caring. And this is the well-known torment of people with children: if you work a lot, it means that you feel guilty that you devote little time to kids; if you focus on them, you throw your work away.
But you have to accept that you are not perfect, you make mistakes, sometimes irreparable – you scratch the heart of a child, it happens. If you don’t have time to prepare for a role, it happens too. All moms and dads know this, everyone has experienced a parental fiasco, but not everyone is ready to accept it. I accepted. I’m just trying my best. This is my slogan: try and do not guess what will come of it.
Your mother was left alone with three children, you were 10 then. Do you take into account her experience?
For my mother, for all of us, the death of my father was like a bolt from the blue. In the morning he waved to me, got into the car and left for work. And never returned. Heart. We couldn’t understand that he was no more. Mom too. Could not accept. Mom’s experience is so unique and tragic that there is no need to use it, learn from it … I think there is no need. There is no need to take on such a loss. But everything that my mother did after the death of my father was female heroism. And it was also selflessness – after my father’s death, my mother did not even try to somehow arrange her fate, and when I had children, she devoted herself to them.
But what I would like to borrow from my mother is the ability to be the center, the heart of the family. In our most important holiday has always been not even Christmas, but Mother’s Day. The second Sunday in May is holy. We always get together at my mother’s – our family, brother Bob’s family and my sister Genevieve, and she, by the way, comes from New Zealand.
Moreover, the previous week we turn our brains with notes. We write messages to mom and each other – with confessions, wishes … Tradition! But also rapprochement, an attempt not to move away, despite the distance and different lives. I would also like to spend my old age reading notes from children and grandchildren. And writing their own, wise …
And you know what, with age, I began to appreciate in my mother, which I didn’t notice before, but now I remembered: it was always in her? Elegance. The ability to look impressive, no matter what. I would say, an outward expression of dignity. In my youth, of course, I did not notice this – I was a punk, I shaved my head, walked in working clothes, despised cosmetics … But, having matured, I appreciated it.
I just wanted to ask: how do you manage to regularly top the lists of the most elegant stars, what do you do for this?
If I understand clothes, it’s in my blood – from my mother and grandmother, she was also a lady. And, by the way, it was she who taught me not to disdain second-hand. And when I’m in New York, I go to Tokyo 7 in the Lower East Side – there are second-hand and unsold items from serious stores. The last time I bought a Rick Owens jumpsuit for a third of the price, I wear it with Acne boots and I’m a success, at least with the family.
I’ve been married for 20 years, although I don’t really believe in marriage. Marriage is a chance to be a family, not a marital status
About him and the question. About your family. Raising three children, you decided to adopt. But why? And how did the boys react to the appearance of Edith?
Yes, there was no special solution. Andrew and I wanted to adopt someone 15 years before Edith – after the birth of the first son, Dashiell, he is now 16. Gender, skin color, even age – it didn’t matter. But then there was work, the birth of Roman and Iggy, he was ten … At some point, we stood in line. How is that? You express your desire, confirm your social stability, and wait for the call. You can wait years. The call always comes suddenly. During the conversation, you can refuse. Or you can refuse, looking at the child from behind the glass …
But we didn’t want to watch. You see, we wanted to give a home, care to a child who didn’t have it. It’s about feeling that in your life, in yourself, there is an emotional place for one more person. We didn’t care who he was. And we were confident in the boys that they would accept this child. And so it happened – no childish protest-jealousy, no puppy sniffing for a new family member.
Male and female
“When I was young, I loved menswear. She wore ties and trouser suits. My idol was Annie Lenox. And in school performances, I played male roles … I guess sometimes I wanted to be someone opposite to me, ”Blanchett admits. In her later career, she completely satisfied her long-standing desire.
She played Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. And in The Manifesto, which consists of 13 short stories (each of which illustrates one of the great artistic and social manifestos of the 13th century), two of her XNUMX roles were male. And these are the characters, resolutely opposite to the feminine texture of the actress – a worker at a construction site and a homeless person.
Iggy thinks he’s in charge of Edith directly. Warns. Patronizes. I raised the boys so that they would never become a problem for women. Truth! That’s exactly what Andrew and I put it: we’re raising men who can’t harm women. And who would have thought that we would have such a cheerful, frivolous, self-confident blonde! She’s almost four. And this, I tell you, is a real blonde, not like me, still a punk at heart.
What does it mean that you are still a punk at heart?
Yes, I contradict everything. And my own life too. I’ve been married for 20 years, although I don’t really believe in marriage. Marriage is a chance to be a family, not a marital status. Just a chance, one in a thousand. And Andrew and I have been together for so many years simply because each of us improves the life of the other. And what really unites us is laughter – I don’t laugh with anyone as much as with Andrew. And I’m a punk also because I dream of complete freedom. I want to be able to choose what to do. I always dream of stopping acting, filming …
Although I love this, I feel in my heart that I am limited by my studies. But the last time I brought this up, Andrew asked, “You can tell yourself, not me, what interests you, besides film and theatre?” I said yes, the amount of plastic on the planet and the refugees. To which Andrew remarked: “Then you better stay an actress – you will bring more benefits.” And it is true.