“I’m interested in diversity,” says actress Cate Blanchett of her career. And after lensing five wildly different films, the Lord Of The Rings beauty has certainly proved her point.
Cate took on Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis in Bandits, the heist comedy for which she just scored a Golden Globe nod. “It was one of those laugh-out-loud scripts, but it’s always who you’re playing opposite,” she says. “If that energy doesn’t spark, they don’t have a film.” No problems there.
“There’s sort of Bruce Willis the industry, and then there’s Bruce Willis the actor, and I didn’t find that one got in the way of the other,” Cate told CNN. “He’s a great facilitator – an incredible energy force.”
The 32-year-old Aussie followed up Bandits with the big screen adaptation of E Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News. “It was a little nugget,” she says of the film, which co-stars Kevin Spacey and Dame Judi Dench. “I had an absolute hoot making it and trying to shock director Lasse Hallstrom as deeply as I possibly could.” In the Miramax drama, Cate plays the sexually adventurous Petal, a role “so obnoxious that I couldn’t say no”.
“I will never say ‘no’ outright to anything,” admits Cate. “And I don’t set about making a particular type of film.”
Industry insiders say Cate is assured an Oscar gong, although no one is quite sure for which film. Her latest project, Charlotte Gray, tells the story of a young Scottish woman in Nazi-occupied France working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover.
“Charlotte has such a strong sense of hope that she’s almost galvanized by her grief,” she says. “She refuses to be defeated.”
Next up for the Elizabeth star is a biopic about Veronica Guerin, the Irish journalist who famously covered Dublin’s underground crime scene and was eventually murdered.
However, these days Cate has an entirely different role to play – that of new mother. She and husband Andrew Upton welcomed their first child, Dashiell John, in early December. And while she hoped to prepare for motherhood, she admits it’s a confounding job. “You can have read all the books, but it’s the most unpredictable experience,” she says.
The Shipping News and Charlotte Gray, both now playing on limited release in the US, hit UK cinemas in February.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
