Australian Sunday Magazine May 2005
During a fleeting visit to home shores -- on her way to a
starring role with Brad Pitt -- the bold Ms Blanchett talks
candidly about family, her film career, endorsing beauty
products and a fear of photography.
By Suzanne Wangmann.
No one has the right to look this good, not with her wet hair
wrapped up in a towel, wearing an oversized hotel bathrobe. But
here sits Cate Blanchett, glowing after a quick face mask. She's
ready for hair and make-up before her Sunday Magazine photo
shoot and, after the initial introductions, I'm left almost
speechless, because this legendary beauty is exactly that: one
of the most beautiful women you could ever hope to meet in your
life. Blanchett must be accustomed to the stunned reaction of
those she meets because she knows exactly how to cut through the
awkwardness. She settles down close to me on the lounge and
produces half a dozen family photographs, and suddenly the
distance between a Hollywood star and a journalist evaporates.
She coos over the three males in her life: her husband,
playwright Andrew Upton, and two sons, three-year-old Dashiell
and one-year-old Roman. "Chubby little boy," she laughs,
pointing to Roman. Both boys are beautiful little Bonds, and
yes, Roman is thick with cuddly baby fat. Upton, unlike the
times he is unceremoniously snapped on the red carpet by
Blanchett's side, looks handsome, happy and completely relaxed.
She's won me over in the first five minutes. Showing journalists
your personal family photos isn't normally star behavior.
Nor is traveling light. For this visit to Australia, there is
neither her family nor the retinue of personal assistants that
generally accompanies an A-list celebrity. There's not even a
hotel maid in sight. But at 9am in the morning, there is an open
bottle of champagne, empty tea and coffee cups, a plate of
muffins, plus a make-up artist and a hair stylist standing by,
and that part is totally normal.
A good portion of Blanchett's' busy life is spent in the make-up
chair. Does all the grooming get to her? "No," she answers
easily. "As an actor, particularly in film, being poked and
prodded is part of it. And the other thing is people like Dotti
[today's make-up artist] and Renya [Xydis, her hair stylist],
they're artist. So, no, not at all. And often I find if you're
putting on a mask or going for a facial, particularly having two
children, it's an hour you have to yourself, so I adore the
grooming!
:Some of my best friends are make-up artists," she adds. These
friends include Jeanine Lobell, founder of Stila cosmetics, and
Morag Ross, who has worked with Blanchett on some of her film
projects, including The Aviator and Charlotte Gray. "When
someone can reinvent your face, it's fantastic, because it is a
canvas."
While most women fall into a make-up rut, finding it difficult
to change their usual eye shadow, Blanchett is a chameleon.
Whether it's the other-worldly Galadriel in The Lord of the
Rings trilogy, the trashy Petal in The Shipping News, a
shaven-headed Philippa in Heaven, or the boyishly glamorous
Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, Blanchett morphs into a new
character several times a year, and she loves that side of her
work.
"I think it's really great to play characters. I never know how
I'm going to play something, how I'm going to look," she says.
"I always choose roles where I have no idea who the person is or
what they're about. It's the process of discovering who that
person is, a different way of looking at things [that interests
me]. Acting is a profoundly human profession -- and it should be
-- but there is a superficial side to it that is incredibly
enjoyable. If you're working with a great photographer who is
interested in you becoming someone else, then it's really
enjoyable."
Blanchett describes accepting the role of Hepburn in The Aviator
-- one of the few films where she was familiar with the
character -- as daunting. "I thought, 'This is the end of my
career, but I'll go out in a blaze of glory because I'm working
with [director] Martin Scorsese.' It was primarily to work with
Martin Scorsese [that I took the role], and then I thought, 'Oh
god, and I've got to play Hepburn!' You've just got to humble
yourself to the task and realize that you're not going to please
everyone. And you can't possibly, because there's such ownership
of her. You have to say to Scorsese, 'What are you after? What's
the tone of the film?' and find out where you fit in. You have
to try and find a balance between giving an audience a sense of
who they perceive Hepburn to be and unlocking the unknowable
about her, then playing the character."
Daunted or not, the role won Blanchett her first Academy Award,
guaranteeing continued glamour, chaos and time in the make-up
chair for some years to come.
Blanchett's life is mostly chaotic. The reason for her hasty
trip to Sydney is entirely to do with skin care. As the
ambassador of exclusive Japanese range SK-II, she's required to
do some publicity for the brand. Last night, it was a dinner
with a gaggle of beauty editors at Tetsuya's Restaurant. She
arrived shimmering in a silver-beaded Hugo Boss evening gown and
wearing remarkable diamond-encrusted Bulgari serpent ring -- the
movie star from head to toe. Everyone was charmed by her: the
way she moved around the table to speak to everyone, the way she
enjoyed the food and the wine (no parsimonious dietary habits),
the way she laughed, talked about the kids , and seemed so
totally normal. At 10:45 pm she said her goodbyes, leaving a
completely besotted fan club in her wake.
This morning, it's her Sunday Magazine interview and
photographs, an afternoon television interview, then a late
flight to Morocco where she starts work on a new film with Brad
Pitt. The movie, entitled Babel, was written by Guillermo
Arriaga and will be directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (the
duo previously collaborated on 21 Grams and Amores Peros). It
involves four interweaving stories that start when a tragedy
befalls a couple on holidays. And Blanchett is looking forward
to her first project with Pitt.
It all sounds fabulously glamorous, but the location isn't as
exotic as it sounds, she says. No Ali Baba caves of stores
proffering jewels and perfumes, but rather, it's in the middle
of nowhere, in "the same location as Gladiator". She hopes the
family will join her for a fortnight during the three-week
shoot. It can't be longer because Dash is attending kindergarten
in London. Also "it's not really a place kids would enjoy", she
explains.
Working in the film industry presents other problems for the
mother of two. "Night shoots are tricky with children, because
you'll come home at 5am and the children will wake up at 6am and
want to play, and so, often, if I'm on a night shoot, I don't
really get any sleep at all. But I think most mothers of two --
I mean a one-year old and a three-year-ld -- don't get any sleep
either and they have to go to the office." But they don't have
to get in front of a camera. "I know," she laughs, "but I
suppose I've had a lot of roles where I look crap!"
Despite being gorgeous, not to mention thin, Blanchett doesn't
like to be drawn into conversation regarding her physical
appearance. She looks concerned when asked how she lost weight
so quickly after the birth of her sons. While playing Hedda
Gabler on stage in Australia, just three months after having
Roman, Blanchett's waist was tiny. "I was wearing a corset!" she
confesses. "It was pretty ugly underneath.
"I think the worst thing for a woman's psyche is to worry about
weight after having a baby," she gently reprimands. "There's
such media pressure focusing on how people look before and after
having a baby. Your body will just do what it does, and you've
got these extraordinary little creatures. And the thing is," she
adds, "even when they look tired, there is something beautiful
about mothers."
Apparently, the actress thrives on the challenges that arise
from combining career and motherhood, and adding more children
to the Upton-Blanchett brood is in the plan. "The chaos is
really great with children. I mean, there's this propensity to
make one's life compartmentalised and organized, and people
can't cope if things are kind of frayed around the edges. I love
[the] frayed edges. I think it's really important."
But when her work calls for a polished performance, Blanchett
knows the value of a good face mask and uses the SK-II Facial
Treatment Mask religiously before shoots. When SK-II launched in
Australia in August 2004, she received some criticism from the
media for her seemingly at-odds association with the brand. She
was quoted as saying, "I'm quite a cynical, skeptical person and
I think that [women's] vulnerabilities are preyed on in the
cosmetics industry." But Blanchett believes her relationship
with SK-II is serendipitous. She had been introduced to the
skincare range by two make-up artists, Morag Ross and Mary
Greenwell. "It [the union with SK-II] just felt organic," she
says now. "The way I choose projects is what comes up at the
time and what feels right at the time. I was already a devotee,
so when they were looking for a brand ambassador, my agent,
completely out of the blue, asked 'Do you use SK-II?' and I said
, 'Yes, how did you know?'
"She came back to me two months later and said they wanted to
know if I used it before [they made the offer]. I really loved
the integrity of that. They weren't interested in slapping
someone's face on something without prior knowledge. And they
were pretty pleased to know that I used a broad spectrum of
their products.
"My mother was always huge on moisturising the backs of your
hands and your face. I've always been aware of it and growing up
being so pale in this country, you are very skin aware."
When the beautiful Blanchett does manage to have some time off,
she enjoys a day spa. Her favourite destination for a good
pampering? Sante Fe, New Mexico, in the US. She loves the
Japanese-inspired Ten Thousand Waves spa with its hot tubs and
massages. "The best facial I've ever had was in Santa Fe at the
La Posada Inn. I had this woman called Rosy from New York" --
and with that she switches into a perfect NYC accent -- "and she
was an excellent facial masseuse," she adds. "I'm naive when it
comes to different types of facials. In the end, I think it's
about the rub, it's about moving and stimulation."
Unfortunately, trips to day spas aren't as frequent as they
could be. She's philosophical about it, though: "I find that
because I'm so clear about my daily regimen -- I've got the
range of products -- I just do it myself. You need facial when
you don't have the time or you don't make time every day." And
in the meantime, there's always Bliss in London, where you can
get an excellent oxygen facial, she says.
Blanchett is a multidimensional character. She obviously enjoys
the girlie side of her work -- the dressing up, the make-up, the
fun of it -- but she's quite earnest when reality takes a back
seat to commercialism. Most women with her schedule would love
the fact that photographs and film can be retouched, the odd
pimple erased, the crow's feet softened -- but not Blanchett: "I
mean, all this digital technology, I feel like it's actually
robbing the art form of its humanity, which is the reason I got
into it in the first place.
"I have to admit, it's taken me a long time to find the
enjoyment in still photography," she says, laughing uneasily and
alluding to the photo shoot, we're about to start, "because I
think you are judged solely on the surface -- it's about
creating a surface -- whereas my job is about revealing an
interior."
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