INT: Cate Blanchett

Any
actress privileged enough to be cast with such incredibly talented,
gorgeous, charming and sexy leading men all in one year should
consider herself the luckiest woman alive! Then again Cate Blanchett
is an extraordinary actress who can hold her own against the likes
of A-list actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and now George Clooney.
She is well poised and sophisticated with classical beauty
and old world Hollywood glamour that is a rare find in this century.

Academy
Award winner Blanchett stars opposite Clooney in the upcoming
Soderbergh film, THE
GOOD GERMAN, in which she portrays a jaded German woman who
has survived the atrocities of WWII. Having
witnessed such horrors, she has become an unbreakable, complex
character who is burdened with many secrets and lies.
Blanchett has previously gained critical acclaim for her
performance in THE AVIATOR, ELIZABETH, VERONICA GUERIN and recently,
BABEL

. The versatile actress is
truly captivating as she puts on a convincing German accent to take
on the challenging role of
Lena
in THE GOOD GERMAN. It’s no surprise that she is in such high
demand.

I recently
had the opportunity to sit down with Blanchett to talk about her
numerous films in the making, juggling her schedule, George Clooney,
and her perspective on filming THE GOOD GERMAN.
Check out what she had to say.

BEWARE
OF SOME SPOILERS AHEAD

!!!

Cate
Blanchett

Cate,
you have a lot of movies out this Fall.

That’s a
bit of an understatement, isn’t it? That’s not my doing.

How
do you decide which one you actually get to come out and talk to us
for? They’re all great roles, great movies. How are you able to
balance all this out?

Babel’s
out already, so there you go. That’s one down. I think (The) Good
German and Notes (on a Scandal) are being released in very quick
concessions, which if I had my way, I’d have Christmas off in
addition to being away from studios.

Your
accent in this film doesn’t sound like a Hollywood German accent.
It sounds like a real German accent. Can you talk about the dialect
training you might have undergone?

You mean
someone like James Mason doing….

Honest
to God, it sounds like a German person.

I think
the model was more the European actresses who were embraced by
Hollywood during that period. As an actress, I watched a lot of
Hilda Garnett, whose work I didn’t know before; and Maria Louis
Reyna and Ingrid Bergman. Fortunately when it’s released in
Germany, it would be dubbed. What the difference I suppose is that
if it was a film of the 40s then I wouldn’t be speaking German and
that Steven decided at the 11^th hour, when I arrived,
that in fact he wanted me to speak German. It melded internal panic
there, but there was a fantastic German advisor who helped me and
obviously Christian, who was playing Lena’s husband, was fantastic
and great to have an actor who said that if it you give it this
cape, it would have a different meaning.

Are
you the kind of actress who has to speak the language on the set all
day?

I think
the more you do as an actor the more facility you have to switch on
and off. Maybe five or six years ago, I think when I played
Elizabeth for the first time, I called home and my husband asked why
I am speaking funny and I didn’t think that I was. I think your
facility is greater than what you do. I’ve certainly have done
that a lot.

Steven
(Soderbergh) wanted to work in the style of the 40s, so did that go
through in the day?

He
didn’t work in the style in terms of the style system. Section 8
is not there. He gets something in terms of the visible style; and
it was utterly influential. To someone else, if you were asked to
perform in this highly theatrical way, it was a very different
emotional production to the way we deceive truthful acting today
without the backdrop. The cycle around is the built sets, the back
lot quality, and also the noir-esque lighting that I think you would
have been in trouble, but all of else really supported that
performance style.

Did
you do any kind of research?

Well, I
studied the Second World War, but I think ultimately, probably from
a victim’s perspective, and that’s the thing about wars. It
doesn’t deal with the brackish until many, many years later; and
something that I did read and dealt into a lot is a book called “A
Woman in Berlin”. It was a journalist who diaries her experience
of living in Berlin when the Russians came in and it was horrific
and terrifying and the way that one became normal and the odd thing
to be at the center of a powerful nation one day. A nation that was
vilified by the rest of the world next and what that did to your
sense of what was good and what was true and that sense that you
couldn’t trust anyone. This woman had just described when her
husband returned, how she’s been irrevocably changed by the rape
on a daily basis by having to sleep with people for food, by then
being betrayed at every step of the way; they couldn’t be together
anymore. So I sort of carried that to the film.

Would
you consider Lena to be a survivor?

She is a
survivor, but with enormous cost. I don’t think you survive
something like that without there being some psychological,
emotional spiritual cost to yourself and to other people, which she
would absolutely acknowledge.

Do
you think it is important for the character’s story to be told in
shifting point of views?

I think
that’s what’s surprising and what’s really great about having
Toby (Maguire) play the role; and I think Toby’s remarkable. You
don’t expect to see his body turned over when you see it turned
over; and I think the perspective and the narrative perspective
helps that surprise, and that’s where it is I came from, those
great stories told in the 40s. The story and the narrative is so
strong, and actually guides the characters through the story;
whereas often you deal with the screenplay in that you kind of have
to show the movie according to which the characters are interesting
rather than the story, and this story is really equal.

How
generous is George Clooney as an actor compared to other leading men
you’ve have worked with?

I’ve
been pretty lucky in the leading men department. I had a good year,
Brad (Pitt), George (Clooney), Bill Nighy. (George) He’s
great. He’s incredibly humble. He’s got such a great perspective
on who he’s perceived to be, who he is, and what he can achieve in
the world, and I think he does it incredibly; he’s a very smart
man. I love spending time with him.

Can
you talk about the preparing for this style of filmmaking as an
actor?

There are
a couple of scenes set as a flashback when they know it’s ripped.
Now if that was done in another film, the demand would have been
different; whereas it was a half glimpse thing and if I hit the
light in the right way, I put my head in the right way, then the
emotions comes across in the right way; as opposed to the camera
finding me, I had to find the camera, so it’s a slightly different
shift, which at first felt quite technical but then I found it
really liberating because it was like the meaning was completed
through the camera. The shots underscore the emotion. You then have
to really calibrate how much to reveal and when I arrived, didn’t
have a lot of preparation time there. I hadn’t been to any
rehearsal or anything. Steven showed me a whole lot of cut footage,
stuff that they had done which was so helpful; and as soon as I saw
that, I knew the reference points, the things he was pointing to, I
went, “Aw, I get it.”

With
2006 wrapping up, who do you think has been the entertainer of the
year?

If only Al
Jolson was still alive.
I don’t know. I can’t wait to see Bill Nighy in “The
Vertical Hour”, and I think Judi Dench is phenomenal in “Notes
on a Scandal”.

What
do you look for in a script? How do you choose a character you want
to play?

Generally
the character is the last protocol with me. Even from Elizabeth all
those years ago, I thought, Glenda Jackson’s done it. What am I
going to bring that’s any different. But when I spoke to Shekhar,
who directed it, I thought, I really want to work with you. It’s
usually that conversation that clinches it for me. I would have
shopped this anywhere, the Steven Soderbergh film.

What
about working with Director Shekhar?

Well
Shekhar and I, all during the first one, we were talking about
finding something to do together. We’re good friends and we’ve
stayed in contact and he’s a man of a thousand ideas. We’re
developing this other film together but that hasn’t come together
yet; and I just said no to Elizabeth, because I thought I’d done it,
I don’t need to do it again. But then we had one great conversation,
he and Geoffrey [Rush] and I, when I suddenly saw it as being a part
of the aging process and taking her to a different level. He wanted
to make a film about immortality. When he talks about it in those
broad sweeps, and also about holy war, which I thought was very
timely; and he talks about it from that perspective; and then he
said that Clive Owen is going to do it and Geoffrey is going to do
it again, so I’m just churlish if I say no to this, so I couldn’t
refuse.

I
couldn’t be more excited about I’m Not There. Which Bob (Dylan)
are you playing?

Isn’t that
the 24-dollar question? Which Bob is Bob? There’s six different
Bobs, and I think that’s the greatness of the idea is that he’s
splitting Dylan’s persona into so many different ways; to a Woody
Guthrie type figure, the TV evangelist. I played him when he went
electric into an actor, into a 17th Century poet, and I think when
you juxtapose all those different personas, then you get a sense of
his spirit or his shape shifting. Mine’s in black and white and I
think some of them are hyper-colored. Todd is a genre-defying film
director to begin with. If you look back to his film school thing
about Karen Carpenter with the Barbie dolls if you’ve seen it, it’s
amazing. He thinks so laterally in such a Todd Haynes way, I don’t
think anyone else could have conceived of the idea, and it’s the
great. The fact that I’m a woman, automatically you have that
Brechtian distance between the persona of Dylan; and the form of the
film liberates it from being a biopic.

Why
are you nervous about it?

It’s
probably the expectations. I was terrified doing it. I had no
interest in imitating Dylan, but yet, Todd was really specific that
I wore the exact suit that he wore in Manchester in 1965, and the
hair. He wants those iconic references, but yet, he doesn’t want an
imitation, so it was a really difficult tightrope to walk, which I
hope I walked without falling off too often. But it’s just that
expectation. Even though the film’s aim is not to be a biopic,
people automatically will want to receive it like that.

You
can’t pick when movies will come out, so are you worried about
having too many movies come out all at once?

I think
every actor has that worry. You never want to be all me, or her
again. I think ties everyone. Everyone needs to step away for a
while.

How
much of the year did you work?

I had
about 6-9 months and then I made Babel, which was 3 weeks, and then
Notes on a Scandal which was a couple of months. The scene between
Notes on a Scandal and The Good German was very tight. I literally
walked off one set on a Friday and started filming on a Monday.

How
did Babel come about it?

They came
to me. Lucky girl that I am. I met Alejandro and I really didn’t
want to work, but he’s such a flatterer that I sucked it up and
went to Morocco. I’m so proud to be a part of that film. I think
it’s an astonishing vision. All three films. It was an amazing
year, and then when you get offered Notes on a Scandal, Patrick
Marber is a friend and I knew he was writing the screenplay and I
read the book, so that very quickly evolved and it didn’t look
like The Good German could fit, then the two camps worked it out. It
was tight for me, but it fitted in. Once you get an offer from
Steven Soderbergh, you just do anything you can to make it fit.

What
happened to Little Fish?

It was so
badly released. It was hopeless. Let’s face it. It was hopeless.
It was a really small film, but small films can find a chance to
find a small audience, so it was kind of criminal to what they did I
thought.

Hopefully
it will have a life on DVD.

I think
most of my films have a life on DVD, hopefully not The Good German.

When
is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button shooting?

It’s
happening now. I start January sometime. It’s a star-crossed
lovers story. I play a woman Brad Pitt meets when he’s about 10,
so he’s really about 85, and I’m 6. There’s a point in their
lives when they can be together. I play a dancer who has an
accident.