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Interview with Margaret Throsby - ABC Classic FM - Early January, 1999
Transcribed by ACBOMargaret Throsby : Today we will be talking to Cate Blanchett. Just 18 months ago, arts writer Brooke Turner prophetically wrote "For Cate Blanchett international fame seems imminent," and there I was a couple of months ago, in Hollywood of all places, on tour with The Sydney Symphony Orchestra, walking along Santa Monica Boulevard under giant posters of Cate Blanchett in the movie Elizabeth and hearing the buzz in movieland that she is being hotly tipped for an Oscar. How does an actor deal with all this? Especially one who doesn't appear to seek out the stardom side of things at all, but whose reputed to be really much more interested in the business of acting. I hope we find out some of this today, Cate Blanchett is our guest. She's a NIDA girl, she's worked successfully on stage here and abroad, she's had a run of roles in films in recent years, Oscar and Lucinda was the first really big one, then came Thank God He Met Lizzie and Paradise Road. But it's Elizabeth, directed by the Indian, Shekhar Kapur, that has everyone talking. It's a wonderful film, despite being criticised as historically questionable. Blanchett's Elizabeth is a sexy' strong-minded woman and I'm interested to find out how she got under the skin of this English queen. Cate Blanchett is our guest and she joins us with music that she's asked for.
MUSIC CUE: From the original cast recording of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown".
ABC: From the original cast recording of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown", and I can't tell you who they were!
CB: (laughing) I don't know who's giving their Lucy, it's not the same record, well not the same Lucy I grew up with so I don't know.
ABC: Cate Blanchett chose that, good morning.
CB: Hello.
ABC: Welcome to the program. Tell me, you grew up with that as a record or as a show you went to see, or what?
CB: No, I have never seen the musical, but I think my father brought it back from the states for us, so as a family we sort of (chuckling) used to act out all the parts.
ABC: That's wonderful and while you were singing along you still remembered all the words.
CB: I know, I know, it's very strange, it's funny enough that when I was doing Oleanna with Geoffrey Rush that we sort of bonded over this musical because he was amazed that I knew all Lucy's lyrics.
ABC: How did he come to know..did he know them as well or..
CB: Well.I can say coz he's out of the country at the moment, (confidentially) but he played "Snoopy".
ABC: Did he?
CB: Yes. Yes.
ABC: In what?
CB: In Brisbane, years and years and years ago.
ABC:Geoffrey Rush as Snoopy.I wonder if that's on his CV?
CB:Probably not. (laughs)
ABC: You've done a lot of work with him actually, haven't you, or quite a few important pieces with him?
CB: Yes, a lot of turning points funnily enough, for me, as an actor have been with Geoffrey, we sort of seem to orbit one another...one of the first things I did out of drama school was Oleanna with him and that was an enormous growing experience for me.
ABC: That was a fantastic play, I loved that. But could we talk about Elizabeth, because that's what's in everybody's mind at the moment and I sort of think it's a bit funny to talk about it to you because the shoot itself was made and in the can and edited and in the theatres a long- longish time ago, so the work for you is now part of your past and you've obviously thought of other things since then. But could you tell me about what went into the business of getting the role of Elizabeth, was it offered to you and a decision you had to make, or what?
CB: Well it's sort of a bit of a myth I think, you read those thing about where I beat 'such and such' for the role, things don't really work that way, projects often are around for years and years and years, this was one of those ones and I just happened to be in London at the time when Shekhar was there and we met and we got on and he sort of cast me from that meeting. And, which is great.
ABC:But you, who set up that meeting?
CB: Robyn Gardiner, who represents me here.
ABC: So with the view that for you playing Elizabeth in this film?
CB: Yes, yeah, I just happened to be with Thank God He Met Lizzie, it was in the marketplace at Cannes, so Cherie Nowlan and I were in London and then on the way back I was there for, I think, 24 hours and they set up a screen test and I screen-tested which was quite an amazing experience.
ABC: In what way?
CB: Well I, well Bruce Beresford, when I did Paradise Road with him, he said that he doesn't believe in screen testing Australian actors because the screen tests, there's so little money that's put into them here, there's not the make-up and the hair people and it's not lit in such a way as the screen tests are overseas, so he thinks that Australian actors don't stand a chance. So he really had to sort of fight, whereas over there just spend so much money that you can.
ABC: Like a mini-film?
CB: Like a small south African nation.
ABC: Did you have to learn lines for it, or can you stand, I imagine, like an audition on stage where you come on stage and they're in the audience and you've got the script and you read a bit and then you go off. Anything like that at all or not?
CB: Well my, my experience was unusual I think I was working with Shekhar and he doesn't have an enormous love of language, he's much more interested in the emotional experience of what's happening at the time, so the lines were sort of there and thrown away, so he wanted me to improvise a lot of Elizabethan dialogue which was, you know, a little bit difficult but you know, I don't mind being pushed in that way, I found it challenging.
ABC: When he offered you the job did you say "yes! yes! yes!," immediately or did you have any doubts about it?
CB: I was intrigued by him and his filmic sensibility. I thought The Bandit Queen was such an incredible film and it still stays with me, so the thought of working with him on that particular piece was exciting but I knew that I had to be away and I just got married and you know, it was quite a painful decision.
ABC: How long was the shoot?
CB: Umm. I was away for about four and a half months I think.
ABC: Where was it shot?
CB: Oh, It was mostly in and around, we were based in Newcastle in Northern England and we went sort of an hour out, on the coast.
ABC: And did you read a lot about Elizabeth? How did you decide to play her?
CB: Well the script takes a very, it has a very strong bookend, a very strong beginning and a very strong end which are diametrically opposed to one another so it was important to me that that journey was really subtly marked because.
ABC: I don't know how you did it, because you start off as a young girlish girl, a playful, flirtatious, sexy girl and you end up a very strong, stiff, white-faced brocade queen.
CB: Yes, yes the end is probably the more recognisable side of Elizabeth, as a monarch that we know, so it was great to go back and whenever you're delving into a political figure's internal life it does have to be invention. But for me, I read mostly, her letters and, funnily enough, her handwriting, I found...It just really, you can in a lot of ways forget that people like that were human beings that lived and breathed so seeing..
ABC: What was her handwriting like?
CB: Well it was quite moving actually, I saw a letter that she wrote to her brother when she was incarcerated, a letter she wrote to Edward and it was incredibly-it was meticulous, it was just divine it was like butter, her handwriting and then I read a letter she wrote at the end of her life I think it was Essex's death warrant and it was incredibly frail and spidery. But she was known for her beautiful hand.
ABC: But she was a sexy, sexy young woman wasn't she?
CB: Well I mean look at the language of Shakespeare, umm, you know, I think that the Elizabethan age was an incredibly sexual place. Not in the necessarily outward way that we perceive now.
ABC: What was the hardest part of that character for you?
CB: (quietly) That's very difficult...umm..
ABC: Did she remain at all elusive?
CB: Yes, it's strange, a lot of times when I'm creating a character I don't, can't even articulate what it is that I connect to and often times it's a piece of music or a painting or it's a word that they say. And I was struck with the fact that she did side herself with her father rather than her mother so I found that really interesting that she used her feminine wiles for political ends but she was an incredibly masculine woman.
ABC: Mmm, interesting. And think in terms of the clothes that she wore - these very inhibiting clothes. I mean we live in an era where our bodies are allowed freedom of expression and comfort and we wear very little in this climate in this country for instance.
CB: We also wash more (chuckles) than the Elizabethans did.
ABC: We hear of them putting lavender and so forth so sort of ward off the odours.
CB: It was a very, very stinky place. I mean Philip Of Spain I think, washed once in his life and no wonder she didn't want to marry anyone.
ABC: You wonder what bred on their skin don't you? What they must have smelt like? In bed for instance?
CB: (laughs) I know you don't want to go there at all!
ABC: You really don't.
CB: Yeah I mean that's part of the reason she reportedly wore a lot of that lead make-up was that she apparently had a lot of cancers on her face and also something which the film makers didn't want to go into was that she was supposed to have had some sort of pox quite early in her reign which left her incredibly scarred.
ABC: Amazing. What about this director, Shekhar Kapur...am I pronouncing his name, "Shekhar"?
CB: Shekhar, as in "mover and shaker".
ABC: Are his methods as a director dramatically different from other directors you've worked with?
CB: Yes, I think he puts off decision making as long as possible. The way films are structured, they're incredibly hierarchical and there's an enormous time constraint, you feel money is on everyone's lips more often than artistic decisions, you know we're talking about a lot of money so I don't blame them but there was a lot of tension between his more 'Indian' way of working and the economics of film making. But that was great because it meant that you felt every take you're making different decisions and I suppose the downside of that it that it's terrifying when you go to a screening because you don't know what decisions you've made, whether they are actually cohesive - and whether they hold together.
ABC: I suppose this is an obvious question, but was it shot chronologically? Did you start at the beginning and end at the end?
CB: No-
ABC: -Don't tell me you started at the end and went backwards?-
CB: -No, I think one of the last things we did was that, no that was in the middle that last image, no the very first scene we did was when she was announced queen. That was the first day.
ABC: I think this is amazing for people working on these things to have to try and keep the thread in your mind for what the story is but particularly for a character that develops into such a different looking and behaving person as you were.
CB: Hmm, I know it's very different to stage in that way, you have to find I think, an anchor for that character you know, as Elizabeth or who that may be, you have to find that and hold onto that.
ABC: Can you describe in words what that anchor was in Elizabeth?
CB: I think it was for me a self assurance. That even, because Shekhar was wanting to explore the young, naïve girl but I kept saying that even at the age of nine she could speak better Latin than her tutors and she was incredibly bright, and I suppose it was that frustration that she knew her worth but no-one would pay her the respect she deserved. So I suppose that tension of what she had to be externally but knew herself to be internally was an anchor for me.
ABC: Ahh. I'm glad you do what you do and I do what I do! (both laugh) because that sounds completely impossible. Let's hear the next piece from your list of music which is Verdi from La Traviata. Tell me about this.
CB: Well when I was shooting Elizabeth I went with a friend to an ENO production of La Traviata and I was just so struck by this woman's performance, I can't remember her name because I was so full of tears and I was so embarrassed that I had to run out of the auditorium so quickly I didn't take the program. But when she signed the letter it was the most emotional piece of acting I've ever seen. The emotion she invested into that "Ooohhh" was you know, I was missing my husband I think, it was very moving.
MUSIC CUE: "La Traviata" by Verdi.
ABC: The voices there of Jon Sutherland and Matteo Mangera with La Traviata by Verdi chosen by our guest today, Cate Blanchett. One thing I want to ask you is about the whole business of acting, I think it must be awful when someone like me comes along and asks you how you do your job because the way you do your job is up there on the screen or on the stage. However, I'm curious to know how you lose self-consciousness?
CB: Oh gosh, that's a life-long work, I mean that really is, that's the hardest thing of all. I think you have to find that bravery to get up in front of people and make a fool of yourself.
ABC: Are there any tricks, are there any shortcuts to it?
CB: It sounds very mundane, but you've got to put your focus on the other person. Because if you're truly listening to somebody and not listening to yourself and concentrating I suppose on trying to effect another person , I sound like an acting manual (laughs) but it's true, you have to listen very acutely I think.
ABC: Do you think acting can be taught?
CB: I do....no, I think a technique can be taught. What disturbs me about acting at the moment is that there seems to be a homogeneity in that people are looking for the next such-and-such rather than people embracing who they are as actors and you know, bringing their natural clown or whatever to the stage. But definitely for me I needed to go to an institution (chuckle) an acting institution for three years just to find discipline and a focus because so often I think, there's so little time to rehearse and you feel that you have to come up with a performance in five seconds and it's really important I suppose to keep learning and accumulating.
ABC: Does it become more of a natural process as you get more and more work under your belt?
CB: Yes and no.It sort of becomes harder in a lot of ways to get up and be fearless-
ABC:-I've heard that, that when you're young and inexperienced you can do anything.
CB: You've got nothing to lose. My very, very, first job I was understudying at the STC for Top Girls, and I had had to come in for the last two weeks and I was sitting and, you know, so nervous with Kerry Walker and Deb Kennedy around a table and I thought 'how am I going to do this?' And I just had to plunge in, and you do.
ABC: The same thing I presume will apply now, even more than ever, in a sense because of the stardom, whether you like it or not with the success of a film like Elizabeth. With everybody talking about it. I'm just wondering that if this is something upon you you'd rather not have?
CB: I suppose, look, if it generates more work then I'm happy to have that. It's always fantastic when a film or a piece of theatre takes off, I mean that's ultimately why you do it.
ABC: Have many offers come in since Elizabeth's been out?
CB:I'm doing a play next, I'm doing David Hare's Plenty in London and after that I don't know. I don't sort of...it's very hard. People keep telling me to plan more than six months ahead, but it's impossible, I don't know how I'm going to feel once I finish that.
ABC: And you don't know what you'll be like?
CB: No, exactly. And I do, I mean I'm terrified and incredibly excited about playing Susan Traherne..umm, but I'm terrified because I don't know how to do it, I don't know how it's going to be. I think that, you know, you find a way of working with the group of people you're working with each time you do it.ABC: Hmm. The film versus theatre conundrum is always there, is it a struggle for you, do you want to keep a balance between working in theatre and working in film?
CB: Yeah, but not for, not because I feel it's good for me, just because I umm, this play came up and it felt like a fantastic opportunity.
ABC: Are you good at learning words?
CB: That's actually the...I've got a terrible memory, shocking memory, but I seem to somehow, I think because over 4 or 5 weeks (I wish it was 2 months!), but over 5 weeks you sort of absorb those experiences and the way those words come out. So that's sort of the easiest part really.
ABC: Hmm, so you don't forget, you're not one of those actors who forgets things?
CB: Well...Each night you sort of, in a lot of ways I have to give it away every time I go on stage I think well I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know if I'm going to remember everything and if I forget then I'll just STOP. And you sort of, I have to say that to myself every night, so.
ABC: Do you get nervous before stage work?
CB: Not really, no. But then it's been a year since I've done it so.
ABC: (laughs) Probably terrified! I've been wanting to ask you about the music that you've chosen for today's program. Was it a difficult choice, did you find it hard getting together these pieces of music?
CB: Umm. I actually loved it! But yeah it is difficult because I...there was another piece which I don't have time to play - Schubert, "The Maiden", and that's one of my favourite, favourite pieces of music. Often when you are sort of developing a character or getting involved in a work, the inspiration for a character can come from a piece of music, and that particular piece, for me, sort of encapsulated Lucinda, form Peter Carey's novel, "Oscar And Lucinda".
ABC: Ah yes, which I looked at the video of yesterday just to go back and refresh the memory. That was a wonderful role, but we'll talk about that in a moment. Can we hear the next piece of music, this is interesting , this is Robyn Archer-
CB: (laughing) This is incredibly selfish, I haven't heard this since I left NIDA. There's the dreaded, the third year is haunted by the need to find an audition piece which is quintessentially 'you'.it's impossible and when I was going through the process I was saying to John Clarke, the head of NIDA, I said I can't find one, and I said I was thinking of singing a song and I found this Robyn Archer (A noted Australian singer and playwright, currently director of the Adelaide Arts Festival - Ed) piece and I transcribed it all and in the end I thought she does it so well I can't possibly do it.
ABC: So you didn't do it?
CB: (laughing) No, I didn't do it.
ABC: Well, we'll let Robyn do it then.
MUSIC CUE: "Herr Direktor" by Robyn Archer.
ABC: From the show "Tonight: Lola Blau", 'Herr Direktor' but it was the talent, the enormous talent wasn't it? of Robyn Archer and special salutes to Dale Wynman the piano player. Chosen by Cate Blanchett. So you decided not to do it after listening to it?
CB: I think you can see why (laughing). Yeah, she's incredible.
ABC: It would have been a great audition piece though, wouldn't it?
CB: It would have been, slightly long maybe.
ABC: Let's talk about other roles, Cate. I had another look at Oscar And Lucinda over the weekend and I also had a look at Paradise Road, which I had not seen, which didn't do very well at the box office and I don't know why, I thought it was a good film.
CB: Yeah, I know. Success seems to be so judged by box-office success and most of the films that I've seen and loved are y'know.one of my favourite films is Underground by Emir Kusterica and it probably, you know, wouldn't have made two and a half cents.
ABC: Hmm. But it's funny, such a fickle thing too. How can you predict what's going to do well at the box office.
CB: And I don't think you should always make decisions based on that.
ABC: Absolutely. Was Oscar And Lucinda the first big one for you?
CB: No, I suppose it was really Paradise Road.
ABC: That came before Oscar And Lucinda?
CB: Yes, I did a small film in Adelaide called Parklands and then, that was really the first film I did, and then I did Paradise Road and from that came Oscar And Lucinda.
ABC: So Paradise Road looked every bit as uncomfortable as I presume it was to shoot? It looks like it must have been a location which was difficult and physically demanding.
CB: But we were in far north Queensland which is one of the most beautiful places on Earth for that.
ABC: Hot and sticky?
CB: Yes, I'm not particularly good in the heat. I think I'm a much more cold climate sort of person. That was probably the only difficulty, but I had a ball .
ABC: It was a very touching story too.
CB: It was profoundly moving actually, learning to sing those pieces of music, it was through that that I had an affinity or came to understand in any sort of way what those women must have gone through.
ABC: Hmm. With Oscar And Lucinda were you a lover of the Peter Carey novel before you came to the film?
CB: Yeah, I'd sort of, I'd wrestled with it. I read it, I was given it for my eighteenth birthday by a friend so I'd read it then and I delved back into it. And it's so fantastic to have such a rich source from which to draw because he painted those two characters so intricately and lovingly.
ABC: Yes. And I think Ralph Fiennes was just amazing.
CB: Yeah, he is amazing.
ABC: Just wonderful.
CB: It was a very fantasy-filled film and I just thought it was lovely.
ABC: Tell me, where did you grow up?
CB: In Melbourne. And I went to university in Melbourne.not a particularly successful experience (chuckles) but I-
ABC: - So NIDA came after doing a degree at university?
CB: No, I didn't finish. I was there for a year and I took off overseas for a year then came back and decided I was doing more in the theatre department than I was in my economics degree so I came to Sydney.
ABC: Why economics?
CB: I suppose I was trying to be practical. I loved it at school but I was more sort of um, I guess it was more politics than economics, really, when I was at high school. When I got to university I sort of had to sit through three and a half years of studying the cattle runs of 1860. It was so dry. And I really wanted to do International Relations which was fourth year.I was too impatient.
ABC: Did you play in plays at school?
CB: Yes, yeah we had a really.I went to MLC (Methodist Ladies College) and they had a very strong theatre department there so I did a lot of theatre.
ABC: Did you come from a theatrical family?
CB: No, no I mean, I have really strong memories of sort of dancing around the house with mum -
ABC: -Learning "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown"?
CB: (both laughing) Yes, of course. Video clips, inventing video clips were a big part of my childhood with my sister.But no, mum wasn't an actor.
ABC: But she celebrated when you went to NIDA eventually?
CB: Yeah, yeah she's been really, incredibly supportive.
ABC: Let's hear some more music and then I want to get onto other things. This is interesting - Ruben Gonzalez? I want to hear about him, who is he?
CB: Well he's an amazing pianist who Ry Cooder I think, sort of 'discovered' and when I first met my husband we sort of um, went to dancing lessons so -
ABC: - Did you?!?! Is that where you met him?
CB: No no, we met through friends.
ABC: So why did you go to dancing lessons?
CB: I dunno, it just sort of came up in conversation one day and -
ABC: - Ballroom dancing?
CB: Ballroom dancing, and one of the greatest teachers on Earth is Keith Bane at NIDA and that's one my strongest memories and I suppose most formative experiences as an actor is having dancing lessons with Keith Bane because he was all about the form, the structure within which you dance and once you've learnt that form then you can break it. It's a little like doing, I guess, life drawing and then going into abstraction. You need to know those forms.
ABC: So you went off to dancing class we you'd just met your husband? Very romantic, isn't it?
CB: Yeah (laughs).
MUSIC CUE: "Cumbanchero" by Ruben Gonzalez.
ABC: An old piece, I remember that. A fantastic piece of music, chosen by Cate Blanchett. Wonderful. Now, let me talk about the here and now. The Golden Globe awards. You've been nominated for a Golden Globe. Tell me what the process is. When did you hear and when will you hear what the result is?
CB: The process is incredibly exciting and is very full of frocks. (laughs) and um, -
ABC: You have to wear a frock for this?
CB: A frock is very important apparently. And um yeah. The most exciting thing for me is that I'm going to get to meet Meryl Streep. She's been nominated as well. I mean really, it is so, it is such an enormous compliment to be in the same sentence as Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and Emily Watson.
ABC: Oh gosh! So when is this, when does this happen? And where? New York or Los Angeles?
CB: 'L.A.' (in an American twang)
ABC: Oh L.A., that's where it all happens.
CB: That's where all the frocks live.
ABC: Do you get any indication.is it really a surprise on the night?
CB: Well.no-one's told me. And maybe that mean's I haven't won. (laughs) No, I don't know. I think it's a surprise.
ABC: What about the Oscars? Is there a chance do you think?
CB: Um, it's sort of time of year really, I think that a lot of films get released at the end of the year for the 'Oscar Push' as it is called. But you can't bank on fate. And it's sort of nice for that to be out in the ether.
ABC: Do you enjoy any of the elements of stardom? Does it sit easily with -
CB: What do you mean, when you, when you -?
ABC: I mean being recognized, and I mean being nominated for big prizes and you'll walk up the red carpet and all the fans who have sat up all night wanting to get a good view and all that sort of thing?
CB: Well it's pretty strange. Having not been a child that has ever wanted someone's autograph, I find the whole thing quite curious. Um, it's very.who wouldn't love getting dressed up in nice clothes and get to meet people you've respected your entire life? Y'know that's fantastic, and I don't get recognised very much -
ABC: - Not yet.
CB: (chuckles) Yeah well..I've been wearing a lot of wigs, so.
ABC: I suppose that the downside would come when there's an expectation on the part of the public, that you're public property and that your private life is public?
CB: Yes.
ABC: The intrusion into one's private life I should I'd imagine would be awful?
CB: Yeah, well it is tricky as the people I love dearly are very private people and I have to respect that and my job is a public job. I'm thirty feet tall and people go and watch that. And also that it's not.the character's filtered through me but it's not who I am and I think that's.while there's an enormous upside about being in a film that people like, you can be sort of aligned with that character really closely. Y'know.it's not who I am.
ABC: Do you love your work?
CB: I do. I love it enormously. And I love it because I don't see it as something I'm always going to do. I treat every job as the only job I'm going to do and then I'll...be an architect or -
ABC: - Architecture? What would you be if you weren't an actor?
CB: Oh.I've talked about it a little bit and I think I'd open a supermarket that made (chuckles) recycling easier. I rail against plastic bags. So most of my friends, I force them to struggle home from the grocery shop without a plastic bag, dropping their groceries.
ABC: Are you an environmentalist or an environmentally conscious person?
CB: Yeah, I try to be. It's really difficult I think. We live in such.everything's so disposable. It's tricky but I certainly do try and avoid the plastic bags.
ABC: What do you do away from work? What do you do for fun, for the time that you're not actually working?
CB: Ahh, I love...I find it very difficult to read when I'm working. I sort of read around what I'm doing, so I've been reading a bit and also because my husband and I have been away all year we've been doing a lot of family things.
ABC: I imagine that the work that you do requires terrific concentration, you'd really have to focus on what you're doing in your kind of job?
CB: But it's like the focus that a child has, particularly in film making (sarcastically) 'my vast career experience' (chuckle) I find that the hardest thing is you having to concentrate solidly for twenty minutes and then you're left to your own devices for two hours, three hours, sometimes the rest of the day. But you're constantly waiting. It's hard to sort of make that waiting time productive but not use your energies so that when you're on for that five or ten minutes that it is focused, it is tricky.
ABC: Hmm. Well we'll be watching the Golden Globes with great interest, and the frock. Have you worked out the frock yet?
CB: Oh no, no, no, it's a big secret.
ABC: Is it?
CB: (laughing) Yeah.PVC.
ABC: OK, well the results, the frock, we'll have to wait to see. But your final choice of music please? It's Arvo Pierd?
CB: Ah, yes. I.adore him. I listen to him a lot when I'm going to sleep.
ABC: Do you? This is going to sleep music?
CB: Yeah.
MUSIC CUE: 'Cants In Memory Of Benjamin Britton' by Arvo Pierd.
The End.