CATE BLANCHETT INTERVIEW
BY Paula Nechak

They say necessity is the mother of invention. So who, in this era of blonde and bland "Baywatch" types, might have enough stamina and intelligent invention to play Elizabeth I, the 45-year ruler over England's "golden age?" Especially in the wake of legendary performances by movie greats Bette Davis ("The Virgin Queen") and Glenda Jackson ("Elizabeth R," "Mary, Queen Of Scots")?

Obviously it would have to be someone with enough weight to hold her own against cinema history as well as formidable costars including Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush (who plays Elizabeth's savvy, sly advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham) and acclaimed director Sir Richard Attenborough. The smart strategy might be to go for someone unknown. How about a 28-year-old Australian named Cate Blanchett?

Cate who?

Her resume includes graduation from Australia's National Institute of the Dramatic Arts (where Mel Gibson and Judy Davis played opposite each other in "Romeo and Juliet") as well as prestige projects like "Paradise Road," "Oscar and Lucinda" and a movie that screened as part of last year's Seattle International Film Festival, "Thank God He Met Lizzie." But note she's been critically singled out opposite big names like Glenn Close, Frances McDormand and Ralph Fiennes. So who the heck is Cate whatshername anyway?

Ask Geoffrey Rush and you'll hear, "She's great, the talk of the town in an extraordinary breed of young Australian actors." The director Michael Rymer says simply, "She's the one to watch." High praise, but they're compliments that make Blanchett blanch.

She's phoned from New York early one Saturday morning to talk about "Elizabeth," her-name-above-the-title film, that opens in Seattle on November 20. She says while the Australian movie industry certainly should boast about a fine crop of young actors like Miranda Otto, Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths and Matt Day, what makes her different is, well, her difference.

For one, she has a gravity and grace onscreen that commands attention. She embodies the Regent "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, with a lusty grasp of her destined place in history.

She's accessible, savvy and strong. And it's not an easy part. In director Shekhar Kapur's grand, if fictionalized, telling, Elizabeth suffers imprisonment and possible death in the Tower at the hand of her Catholic sister, the Queen Mary, later deemed "Bloody Mary" for her hate crimes against the Protestants. She's separated from her first love, Robert Dudley (played by Ralph's brother, Joseph Fiennes), because he may he a traitor to her cause, and must endure the pain of treacherous first love.

But back to basics. "Your question is impossible to answer," she says. "It's a very nice thing for Geoffrey to say but I think what distinguishes me is what distinguishes them. There's no sense of homogeneity at the moment in the Australian film industry as far as actors. All the actors you name embrace their difference, which I think is really healthy. And it's hard in Australia because we're further away from America, which is a comparatively enormous film industry, so it's rarer we even get seen overseas."

Still, Blanchett has noted in Australian magazines that she relishes the courage of Australian directors in casting her over name American actors who might guarantee a built-in ticket sale. Did she feel any twangs of conscience branching out of Oz and into English territory?

"Not at all," she says. "I actually balk at the idea of 'nationalism.' It's a very conservative concept and I relish working with a disparate group of people. The idea of working with Shekhar was what excited me about this project. Nothing is purely an Australian - or American - film anymore."

"In fact, none of the directors I've worked with lately are Australian. I've just done three films with British directors - 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' with Anthony Minghella (who won several Oscars for "The English Patient"), 'Pushing Tin' with Mike Newell and 'An Ideal Husband' with Oliver Parker. We had Italian-English-Australian crews with a British and Australian cast on one; an American and Australian cast and an English director on another. There is no purely national filmmaking going on."

So how does a young Australian grasp the idea of playing England's monarch? "Well," she warns, "I won't work in reaction to what others have done. I'd seen the BBC version with Glenda Jackson when I was in high school."

"I watched the Bette Davis film later and I did a lot of reading. I also went to the National Portrait Gallery and we all discussed the fact that this would not be a totally accurate historical portrait of Elizabeth. That was never the intention."

"What I did go back to out of frustration, particularly at male historians who dwelled on her so-called virginity, were the letters she wrote. It was there I could see the mechanics of her brain and her thought processes and the way she was able to play people off against each other, as well as her extraordinary intelligence."

"I think Elizabeth's interior life will always be speculation and fictitious. We know the events in history and the impact she had upon England, but how she felt about things is always invention."

"The little things helped," adds Blanchett.

"I learned how robust she was and that she liked men who hunted, danced and were agile. She was vigorous as a human being. The Elizabethan Age was an electric, volatile age. It's not as staid as the BBC version of her life would have us believe."

"You know, she was in her element in front of a large crowd. She had the instincts of a performer and she was aware of dramatic impact and the symbolism of gestures, particularly in the way Shekhar staged certain things, like her meeting with the Duc d' Anjou."

So with Blanchett's theater background is it an easy transition to move from the stage to the screen? "It depends on the role," she says. "It's important to know the style in which everyone involved in a project is working. You can tailor your instincts to the style so you're all involved in the same film."

"For example, I'm doing David Hare's play, 'Plenty,' next year at the Almeida in London and I'm really excited about it but that play terrifies me because I have no idea yet how to approach it."

"The problem with film is you have a time lag before you know whether it all works or not and in the theater you find out each night whether you've communicated something to the audience. You're dislocated from the audience in film and in some ways, it's dissatisfying."

Blanchett laughs, "It's not until - god willing - you're in the supermarket and someone stops you and asks what it was like to work with Ralph Fiennes. Then you know someone's actually gone to see your film."

But the actress says she's not all that interested in developing personal projects in order to steer her career toward that ultimate plateau called stardom, no matter how great the feeling when she's recogized in the express line at the local store. "Oh, it's hard to say, she counters. "I'm not interested in pushing myself forward because I think human beings often push too hard in a totally wrong direction."

"I'm fluid about work and so far I've been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time without having to push my photograph around a lot. I feel better and more secure if I've gotten the job because of the previous work I've done. If I don't get cast because my profile's not high enough then it's probably not the right film for me to do anyway."

That said, Blanchett's ascension has been startling. In two years she's acted in everything from Chekhov onstage to the Queen of England. She laughs and says, "It's amazing isn't it? I think it will be death for me, and for my acting, if I can't continue to take such huge risks."

"You always have to put yourself out there and if you fail, fail gloriously," she notes. "But frankly, if you don't try to do something bigger than 'you' from time-to-time, well personally, I just don't see the point."

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Aussie Cate Online © 1999 Lin, Dean, Lance
800x600 screen size recommended.