Cate's great in housewife role

Pushing Tin
(15) John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett. Dir: Mike Newell. US. 1999. 124mins.

by Cate Blanchett

In Pushing Tin I play Connie Falzone, a housewife from the heart of Middle America. And I nearly out-Parton Dolly Parton! I wear tight pants and lots of gold jewellery and big hair. And an amazing bra in which you put little triangular helpers (called, in the industry, "chicken cutlets") to give you enormous breasts. It was great - I've never had them before!

Connie is married to an air-traffic-control freak played by John Cusack. He "pushes tin" at New York's TRACON, which is the Terminal Radar Approach Control centre, where he is the best on the radar scopes. When rival tin-pusher Billy Bob Thornton - an easy rider on his motorbike - arrives, the film becomes a comic tale of rivalry and near misses, both in mid-air and in mid-marriage.

These guys live in the air-traffic-control pressure cooker and stew away in stress and anxiety, which is not very liberating for a wife. But as a suburban housewife, the experience for me - certainly after Elizabeth - was very liberating. It was a different world and about three thousand miles and four centuries removed from Elizabeth. It was a joy! When we finished filming I felt like a weight had been removed from my shoulders.

It was pure comedy and director Mike Newell is a fantastic major-general who understands the balance between comedy and pathos. He'd a tight cast that included Angelina Jolie as Billy Bob's screen wife. With me, he wasn't asking for a repeat of anything I'd done. It is encouraging to stretch your wings and I relished being Connie, Queen Of The Shopping Malls. I even liked the hair.

Evening Standard UK. Octover 26, 1999.

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

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