Due to webpartners on holiday, we are offering the balance of Cate's wonderful interview with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) FM Radio conducted earlier this year, in lieu of our regular July 5 edition of the Cate News. Check back soon for the latest and the greatest having to do with the divine Ms. Blanchett. The first two segments of this massive interview appeared in earlier issues of the Cate News. Please check the main table of contents if you missed any part of it. Without further adieu, here's our Cate...

ABC: And you don't know what you'll be like?

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.

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.