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Online exclusive! ELLE interviews Cate Blanchett
The elegant actress openly chats with ELLE Canada about her upcoming roles.
By Egle Procuta
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Another one of your upcoming films has an intriguing name: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And it has you working again with your Babel co-star Brad Pitt. Tell us about that project.
It's loosely based on a F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who's born old and ages in reverse. I play the girl he meets, when she's 6 and he's 10, when everything is supposed to be perfect and they can actually be together. It's a star-crossed lovers' story really -- an epic story in the way Moby Dick is epic. But the film's release is still a way's off. It's got more filming to go and then post-production process, which can be very long.
What's it like to work with Brad Pitt again?
Oh, Brad is mesmerizing and extraordinary in this because he takes the character all the way through a life.
Speaking of mesmerizing, what is it about Australian actors that sets them so far above the crowd?
We're very curious. And we travel a lot. And our film industry is very small. There's a wealth of talent there. And there's not enough work in the film industry to keep people at home. To have a continually expanding career, you have to travel.
I think that's the thing of any culture. I mean, if you're a French actor and you want to have audience outside your own country, you have to travel. There's not that sense in America that you have to do it, I suppose, because the film industry is so large there.
Describe this Australian rite of passage of travelling abroad when you're young.
You take a year off after high school or university and you travel with no particular thing in mind. It's almost a cliché in Australia. I think some people do it and then settle down into what is their lives. And some people do it and set off on a journey and then travel for the rest of their lives, in one way or another.
Wasn't it on your 'rite of passage' travels that you got your unexpected start in acting when a casting director gave you a bit part on a film being shot in Egypt?
Oh dear (sigh). It's like I've got one anecdote and it's so minor and so many other things happened. But on the Internet, these stories become so overblown. I went away not wanting to be an actor at all. And I literally did it (the role in Egypt) because I had no money at all and someone offered it to me. And I thought: 'Well, that will buy me food for a week. Ad I can stay in Egypt for a week longer.' But it was utterly boring. It's a pretty dull story.
But it's a story that's survived in your resume…
The media, forgive me, tries to make your life liner. And a creative life does not happen that way. Very few people's lives happen that way. One event evolves into another. It's much more random. I've had a healthy lack of consequence. I made some dreadful mistakes and I've pulled in some dreadful performances. But you just keep moving forward. You have to have a very strong sense of your own internal success barometer, setting new challenges and learning from your mistakes.
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