Cate Blanchett’s skin. Wowsers. Pure white marshmallow. Not a hint of
fake puffery: I was worried she might have succumbed, like so many of her
Hollywood contemporaries. It really is the finest skin I have ever seen, I
say.
“Ha, ha, ha, haaa,” fuffles 39-year-old Cate, tucking her feet up on a chair
in the Covent Garden hotel, London. I guess she is used to it. Here on a
publicity junket for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she will later be
perfectly queenly with a group of Japanese journalists who agonisingly
dissect, through a translator, the film’s CGI technology. (All she will say,
gently, is that she doesn’t “really enjoy this bit”.)
The Cate machine has taken over most of this floor and the above, where her
three boys, Dashiell, 7, Roman, 4, and Ignatius, eight months, are sleeping.
“They’re in a big bed upstairs, and the baby’s in the bathroom,” she says.
Behaving, or ordering chocolate milkshakes on room service? She laughs: a low,
velvety rhhmm. “Look, you can’t be friends with your children. On a film
set, they can be so indulged, you need to draw the line.” She’s a good
mother, then? “I’m incredible,” she says. “They love me so much, they kneel
by their beds every night.”
Presumably, the joy of being a star as big as Cate — since her break-out
performance in Elizabeth in 1998, she has done countless big movies,
including The Aviator, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Babel — is that she
gets whatever she wants, wherever she goes. “Well,” she says, furrowing her
brow, “I’ve always done as little of this as I can. The release of a film
has a lot of travel demands, and there’s a practical concern with children:
where is it being shot, how long am I going to be away for, will it work
with the children’s holidays?”
Well, as far as I can see, it’s all licking along beautifully. She’s even
managing to commute between Australia, where she is artistic director of the
Sydney Theatre Company, the country’s answer to the RSC, and her home in
north London. This year will be quieter, she says, because she has not made
a film, although she will probably have to be based in Australia for the
opening of her first theatre season, along with her husband and co-artistic
director, the screenwriter Andrew Upton — or, as he comically describes
himself, “the hand”, due to the fact he is always cropped out of pictures of
her.
“He is one of the strongest individuals alive,” Cate says, her accent
Australian worn smooth. “He has a very healthy ego. Because I’m a more
public face, people automatically make assumptions. If only people knew. I’m
incredibly fortunate.”
Fortunate and, I’ll say it again, remarkable to look at, especially
considering that she gave birth only eight months ago. I’ve searched and
searched for evidence of a personal trainer or a terrifying Pilates
obsession, but really, it’s just not Cate’s vibe. She’s been thin sometimes
— too thin — but I suspect she might be one of those irritating people who
lose weight due to stress, rather than a vicious regime. Today, she is
luxuriantly plump in the hips and dressed calmly in Kenzo and Armani. Her
Vuitton pumps — “They smell” — come off instantly. “You don’t tend to think
of fashion that much after you’ve had a baby,” she says. “I haven’t been to
Style.com or to a show for many a month.”
Cate is curious-looking, like an incredibly beautiful sea anemone, sloe-eyed,
with straight, chic teeth. If I were going to be terribly picky, they’re a
bit bloodless, perhaps. She says “look” and “it’s confronting” a lot, in the
manner of a free-thinking schoolteacher. There is something a bit fruity
about her, too. I am sure that if the baby were crying nearby, she wouldn’t
hesitate to whip out a breast; late at night, after several glasses of red
wine, you would be at high risk of a discussion about free will or textual
lacunae. When I ask her if she would like another child, she says “yes”
immediately. A girl, maybe? “Not necessarily, no,” she replies. “It’s the
ultimate expression of hope, isn’t it, to have children.”
As a girl herself, she grew up in middle-class Melbourne. “I was really
obnoxious,” she says. “Very hairy politics; hopefully I’m a bit more
sophisticated now. I think I’ve learnt to shut up.” Her father, a Texan
advertising executive, died from a heart attack when she was 10; her mother
was a teacher. She has described her younger self as “part extrovert, part
wallflower”, but she doesn’t seem to have changed much. Did she always want
to act? “I think with every child who’s a slight show-off, it’s, ‘Oh, she’s
an actress’, ‘Can you please shut your child up?’,” Cate says. “That was
definitely said about me.”
Drama school settled the matter; it calmed her down. Before, she recalls, “my
impulses were firing off a bit randomly”. But she was still headstrong
enough, in 1996, to put off her future husband at first. “He thought I was
aloof,” she says. “And I thought he was really a headache. Then we got to
know each other.” Was it love at first sight? “Annoyance at first sight,”
she laughs. “I believe happens, but it’s whether it lasts. Would Romeo and
Juliet have made it if they hadn’t been so silly, a bit more patient? You
have to be prepared to make the same leap at the same time. It’s about
rhythm. I’m sure if you have a good sexual relationship, then you’re in sync
with one another.” She pauses. “It’s all about being in sync. Love is
tough.”
Her new film is about a very peculiar sort of love. Adapted from an F Scott
Fitzgerald short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the tale of a
man (Brad Pitt) who is born old, but gets younger as time advances. Cate
plays Daisy, a ballet dancer who has a crippling accident. It is a typical
Blanchett performance: deep, passionate, glacially sexy. There is also lots
of dancing. She recalls a funny review of another of her films. “It must
have been five or six years ago,” she says. “I laughed and laughed — while I
was crying. This reviewer was going, ‘Would someone please stop Cate
Blanchett from dancing in every movie she does?’ I thought, do I dance in
every movie? Well, I suppose I do a little bit. It was so funny. Maybe all
human beings dance. Or he just doesn’t like my work.” And it’s quite funny
in this film, too, not least because, at one point, she does the splits.
“Obviously, there are a couple of manoeuvres I could not have done,” Cate
says. “I was probably better at the bits after Daisy had her accident.”
She has worked with Pitt once before, on Babel. “I find it very easy, working
with Brad,” she says. (How much would you pay to be able to say those
words?) “I’d like to say it’s difficult, but he’s incredibly, unbelievably
good-natured. Very patient. The old-age make-up took six hours, and you
could only shoot for a certain amount of time before it began to degrade and
eat away at your flesh.” She wasn’t fussed by the ageing process herself,
but “it will be weird for my mother. Who sees their daughter at 86? What I
did think is how few naturally aged faces you see on screen. It’s
confronting”. Does she care what she looks like? “I think I look better now
than I did, more myself,” she says. “I’ve removed the layers of grime of
adolescence.”
Well, she won’t have to worry much about film-star vanities this year. She
will play a man on stage, for a start: Richard II, in Sydney. “I spent
weeks, months, agonising about how I’ll do a man — again,” says Cate, who
played Bob Dylan in I’m Not There in 2007. A few stuffy feathers were
ruffled at the Sydney Theatre Company when she was appointed in the first
place, but clearly that hasn’t stopped her pushing boundaries. She wants to
make the company “as nimble and accessible as possible”, she says. “It’s an
extraordinary opportunity and a great responsibility. We’re loving it.”
Perhaps theatre will ultimately claim her? It’s probably where she belongs,
anyway, and besides, it’s difficult to know what further heights she might
scale on the silver screen. “I’ve had such a cornucopia of experiences in
film, I feel, I don’t know, I always feel, surely I’ve done enough now, I
can give it all up,” she says. “I’m really enjoying running a theatre
company. I think a large part of that is because I’m facilitating other
people, standing back and having an objective role. Because to be constantly
in subjective places, I think that way madness lies.” Oh, Cate, you’re such
a luvvie. But a lovely luvvie, nonetheless.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens on February 6
