Happy Birthday, Cate Blanchett! – Mass Update 2022
Posted on
May 14, 2022

Happy Birthday, Cate Blanchett! – Mass Update 2022

Today is the day! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CATE BLANCHETT! We wish that she have a healthy life and continuous success in her career.

In our own little way of celebrating Cate’s birthday, it has been a tradition of the Cate Blanchett Fan team to have a mass gallery update, which aims to make as many photos as possible available to everyone. We have updated some low quality to middle/high quality photos and uploaded additional photos from events, movies, photoshoots, magazine scans.

This fansite is run for free by Cate fans but every year we also have to renew the host in order to keep the site open. This costs US$300 and the deadline is in August this year. We hope that you can support the site by donating — any amount is deeply appreciated. You can click on the donate button below or on the left side bar (when viewed on desktop).

Enjoy the update!

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Greg Williams has shared the colored version of some photos taking during 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Nicola Clarke, who is Cate’s hair stylist and friend also shared a video with some never before seen photos towards the end of the video.

Cate Blanchett and Cindy Sherman on New York Times
Posted on
May 4, 2022

Cate Blanchett and Cindy Sherman on New York Times

Ciao, everyone!

Last week Cate went to an exhibition by Cindy Sherman while she was in New York and NYT has released an article about the visit.

On the 45th anniversary of Sherman’s acclaimed series “Untitled Film Stills,” they toured her show, discussing what an image, or a smile, may reveal.

Cindy Sherman and Cate Blanchett had only met in passing, a few times. And yet there is an identifiable thread connecting the work of Sherman, the artist who (dis)appears, disguised in character, in her own photographs, and Blanchett, the protean and Oscar-winning Australian actress. On a gray morning in late April, the women, mutual admirers, convened at Hauser & Wirth gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where a collection of Sherman’s critically acclaimed early work opened May 4, and where they quickly forged a connection.

“I’m a massive fan,” said Blanchett, proving her adulation with detailed questions, both technical (does Sherman use a timer?) and philosophical (“where does rhythm sit in photography?”). Blanchett had whisked into town to receive an award from Film at Lincoln Center, before heading back to London, where she is filming “Disclaimer,” an Apple TV+ series directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

Sherman was busy overseeing the exhibition, which includes all 70 of her untitled film stills, the black-and-white photos that put her on the map, and shook up the art world, starting in the late ’70s, as well as her subsequent rear screen projection and centerfold images, all in color and all starring her. Sherman, 68, and Blanchett, who turns 53 this month, toured the exhibition together, eagerly finding commonalities.

“She really takes on different personas,” Sherman said admiringly.

In 2015, Blanchett performed in “Manifesto,” a 13-channel video art installation by the German artist Julian Rosefeldt, in which she played at least a dozen different characters, from news anchor to homeless man, reciting various artistic and political manifestoes. (It was later released as a feature film.) “That was inspiring,” Sherman said, adding that she felt like she’d done some of those characters too. “It was a nice confirmation, of feeling like we’re on the same wavelength a little bit.”

In what was less a conversation than a cosmic matchup, they talked about getting into character, childhood play, the value of makeup, and the horror of clowns. These are edited excerpts.

How do you make use of each others’ work?

CATE BLANCHETT Filmmaking can be very literal. So, I find anything you can do to move yourself to a more abstract space. Sometimes it’s a piece of music. But invariably it’s an object. Oftentimes, I’ll make a whole tear sheet composition about the feeling around something I can’t articulate, images that had nothing to do on a conscious level with what I’m doing. Like the Clown series, for instance. I can’t even begin to express my revulsion and terror — the visceral feeling of seeing those works [Sherman’s series of lurid clowns]. I tore it out for [the Guillermo del Toro film] “Nightmare Alley” recently.

I find if you slam something left of field up against what you need to do as an actor, it can create something slightly more ambiguous. It doesn’t always work.

CINDY SHERMAN I don’t really get into the characters that way, but there’s a big difference between what I’m doing and acting. I’m just standing still, and because I’m also working alone, I can really mix it up, do the complete opposite of what I thought the character should do — and sometimes that works.

Did either of you grow up thinking that you had very malleable faces?

SHERMAN I didn’t.

BLANCHETT No. I used to do this thing with my sister where she would dress me up, stand me in front of the mirror and give me a name. Then I’d have to figure out that person. My favorite one — we kept saying we were going to make a movie about him — his name was Piggy Trucker. He was a little short guy, a bit like an Australian Wally Shawn [the actor and playwright Wallace Shawn], and he drove a pig truck. [I was] probably about 7, 8 years old.

SHERMAN It was playing dress-up. My mother would go to the local thrift store and for 10 cents buy these old prom dresses from the ’40s or ’50s. There was also, I think it was my great-grandmother’s clothes that were left in the basement. I discovered them, and it was like, wow. It looked like old lady clothes, but also the pinafore type of things. When I was 10 or 12, I would put them on, stuff socks to hang down to the waist to look like old lady [breasts], and walk around the block.

BLANCHETT [laughing, pretending to be Sherman] I knew then I wanted to be an artist!

Often, these things start as play and then the exploration becomes, I imagine, a seamless transition. It’s not conscious — some of these things, you’re doing without thinking.

SHERMAN Yeah. When I was in college, I was putting makeup on and transforming myself in my bedroom when I was studying painting. I think I was working out my frustration with whatever was going on in my life, and my boyfriend at the time finally just said, you know, maybe this is what you should be taking pictures of. And that seemed like a good idea.

Sometimes, I’ll be making up [a character] and look in the mirror as I pose, and I suddenly feel like I don’t recognize [myself]. Wow, where did she come from? It’s kind of spooky, kind of cool. [To Blanchett] How do you come up with characters? Like all those for Julian [Rosefeldt]?

BLANCHETT It was so fast. It was quite interesting for me actually, because you can get really hung up on your character’s back story, particularly in American acting culture. It’s all about your connection — if your mother died or father died, then use that. That is really alien to me anyway. I’ll talk to my therapist about that. What was really great about the Julian thing was, there was no psychology. It was just a series of actions. Most of the time, we’re not thinking about what makes us tick. You’re doing things. [To Sherman] You’ve done a few male incarnations too.

SHERMAN That was a lot harder. I had to just become confident in a way that I, as a woman, maybe am not. Once I relaxed into the character, I [sometimes] felt, this is a very sensitive guy.

Sometimes, I’ll be making up [a character] and look in the mirror as I pose, and I suddenly feel like I don’t recognize [myself]. Wow, where did she come from? It’s kind of spooky, kind of cool. [To Blanchett] How do you come up with characters? Like all those for Julian [Rosefeldt]?

BLANCHETT It was so fast. It was quite interesting for me actually, because you can get really hung up on your character’s back story, particularly in American acting culture. It’s all about your connection — if your mother died or father died, then use that. That is really alien to me anyway. I’ll talk to my therapist about that. What was really great about the Julian thing was, there was no psychology. It was just a series of actions. Most of the time, we’re not thinking about what makes us tick. You’re doing things. [To Sherman] You’ve done a few male incarnations too.


Click images for higher resolution

SHERMAN That was a lot harder. I had to just become confident in a way that I, as a woman, maybe am not. Once I relaxed into the character, I [sometimes] felt, this is a very sensitive guy.

BLANCHETT Often a smile is a defense. It’s actually a shut down rather than an invitation. When you smile with your eyes, that’s where the genuine thing comes from. One of the many things that’s so powerful about your work is creating that expectation [of emotion] but not delivering, so there’s an eerie sort of hollowness to it. It’s the disconnect from what we present to who we actually are, and that vacuum between the two. It’s often the space where all our personal horror sits.

[To Cindy]It’s interesting, you go through this process by yourself. I’m not a great fan of the monologue. I did a play once, a Botho Strauss play, where I had a monologue for 25 minutes. It was like, wow, this is lonely. Often on films, there’s zero rehearsal or even conversation about stuff. You’re just meant to walk on and deliver. You’re thinking about the result, and I find that a pretty deathly way to work.

I’ve realized over the years that my relationship with the costume designer and the hair and makeup people is really profound. It’s profound to see what the character looks like, and therefore how a character might move or project. Those departments — so-called “female guilds” — are often things that male directors profess to know nothing about. “I’ll just leave that bit to you.”

I played Elizabeth I years ago and the director, whom l love and respect, was always, I just want the hair down, flowing in the wind. I said, have you seen the pictures of Elizabeth I? There weren’t that many like that.

But it’s because [some male directors] need to feel attracted. They can’t see that there are other ways — and not even in a sexual way — you can be alluring. You can draw an audience into a character’s experience in many different ways. I keep going back to the clown images — you can tell I’m really disturbed by them. When you’re taking them, do you think: I want people to feel repulsed by this?

SHERMAN Even the repulsive things I’ve done — grotesque things with rotten food — I want people to feel kind of repulsed, but attracted and laughing at it, all at once. I don’t want people to take it too seriously.

I’ve always been attracted to horror movies, and I equate that to the feeling of being on a roller coaster. You know you’re not going to fall out, but you can still be terrified. And then it’s all over. I think that’s how fairy tales functioned way back when. I was trying to do that with my work, to make it seem from a distance like, oh, pretty colors! And up close — oh, it’s a little awful. But then you get the joke.

In the mid-80s, this company in Paris asked me if I would make some ads for French Vogue. That’s when I started playing with fake blood and fake noses. They hated it, of course. That inspired me to make it much more dark. I got fake scar tissue and fake body parts. Eventually I found these prosthetics — fake [breasts and butts] was the perfect way to start playing with nudity, partly because I think I’ve been hiding in the work. The idea of revealing any part of myself literally was never the point.

BLANCHETT I’m quite kinesthetic — that’s why I love being onstage, I feel like I’m always better in movement. You’re so incredible, there’s so much movement, and then, it’s all captured in this vibrating, still image.

It’s like when you go and see dance. It’s that moment of [sharp inhale] suspension before someone lands that’s so thrilling. Andso great that [your photographs] are not titled. You’re not led to make any particular sense of them. These works, it’s like a litmus test. Thank you.

Source: New York Times

New Armani Beauty Campaign and Harper’s Bazaar Magazine Scan
Posted on
May 4, 2022

New Armani Beauty Campaign and Harper’s Bazaar Magazine Scan

Good day, everyone!

Armani Beauty has launched their new campaign for their lipsticks line — Lip Maestro. Check out the ad and promotional photo they released with Cate, who is Giorgio Armani’s Global Beauty Ambassador. There is also a short article from Harper’s Bazaar España with an interview conducted during 2022 Goya Awards.

Armani Beauty – Lip Maestro Campaign

Armani Beauty Lip Maestro – Photoshoot and Campaign Ads

 

Harper’s Bazaar España – May 2022

First look at TÁR and Borderlands shown at CinemaCon
Posted on
Apr 29, 2022

First look at TÁR and Borderlands shown at CinemaCon

Happy Friday, everyone!

Attendees of CinemaCon 2022 in Las Vegas were treated to a first look at TÁR and Borderlands which will be both released this year. There is also an additional article with interview with Cate from The Hollywood Reporter for Chaplin  Awards.

TÁR Reaction

First footage of TÁR was specifically created to be shown at the event on Wednesday (April 27th). The movie is on the upcoming slate of Focus Features and is schedule to be released on October 7th 2022.

Cate Blanchett Smokes The Competition As A World-Famous Conductor

According to Deadline, the film will follow Blanchett’s Lydia Tár, a (fictional) renowned and groundbreaking conductor who becomes the first woman to lead a major German orchestra. “Joker” composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will score the picture, while Field is writing and producing in addition to directing. Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Julian Glover, Mark Strong, Allan Corduner, Sylvia Flote, and cellist and Royal Academy of Music alum Sophie Kauer are among the announced cast.

The film is in post-production, but CinemaCon audiences were treated to an exclusive first look at the footage so far.

The footage shown at CinemaCon was brief, albeit striking. A woman (Cate Blanchett with her face obscured) stands against a black background, slowly opening her mouth to let smoke pour out. I know, I know, smoking is bad, but Blanchett makes it look like the coolest, sexiest thing in the world. The shot is presented with a narration discussing how the pandemic has had a massive impact on our culture and belief systems.

“But there are other plagues,” the narrator says.

The narration continues, talking about nature, but the camera remains on this single shot of smoke leaving her lips, and pulsating into a strange form that continues obscuring her face. The narration takes a turn for the intense, and says that you must “stand in front of God and obliterate yourself.” Finally, the camera cuts to a different image, one of a woman conducting the orchestra. Lydia Tár may not be a real person, but whomever this woman is that Blanchett is bringing to life, seems like an absolute badass.

Official plot details about “TÁR” are scarce, but Focus Features says it’s “set in the world of classical music, starring the incomparable Cate Blanchett.”

Focus Features shows the new Todd Field movie at CinemaCon

Audiences got a look at TÁR, the first film from Todd Field (Little Children) in 16 years. Not much is known about the film just yet, only that it takes place in the world of classical music and stars Cate Blanchett. That should be enough. The footage shown at CinemaCon was created exclusively for the event and consisted of Blanchett exhaling smoke in slow motion while a monologue about the nature of power played underneath. 

Borderlands Reaction

On the last day of CinemaCon 2022, Lionsgate has presented their 2022 slate which includes Borderlands starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt and Florian Montaneau. There is no release date for the yet. Based on the reports from the attendees, a clip for Borderlands that run for one minute was shown during Lionsgate sizzle reel.

IGN Southeast Asia — The first look at the Borderlands movie was revealed at CinemaCon 2022, and it looks to be a faithful adaptation of the beloved video game franchise. While we only saw about a minute of footage, it was immediately clear that this film is set in the Borderlands universe. From the artstyle to hearing Jack Black as Claptrap to seeing Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tannis, and Kevin Hart as Roland, all the familiar beats from Borderlands are being hit, albeit with a bit of Hollywood starpower being thrown in.

The Hollywood Reporter — The first footage for Borderlands has arrived — and just like the immensely popular video game series, it was spectacular.

The highly-anticipated film, based on the blockbuster gaming series developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K, got a sneak peek Thursday during the Lionsgate panel at CinemaCon.

Lionsgate showed approximately a minute of electric footage that showcased Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett as she’s never been seen before, in a fire-engine-red wig, toting a gun and fighting her way through a vibrantly colored cityscape. Kevin Hart also appeared as did Jack Black voicing the robot Claptrap that unexpectedly takes a bullet from Blanchett’s gun with a punchline to follow.

SlashFilm — The “Borderlands” footage came as part of a sizzle reel from Lionsgate, which also showcased footage from “The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and the upcoming “Dirty Dancing” sequel. In the footage, we see Cate Blanchett as Lilith in a killer bright red wig, which seems worth the price of admission alone. Kevin Hart’s character Roland says, “Nothing better than a little wham, bam, thank you, man.” There’s a robot (fans of the games will recognize as Claptrap) voiced by Jack Black, who says, “Whoopsie, you accidentally shot me in the face again.”

And that’s about all there was to see! It isn’t much, just enough to give a little tease of the upcoming “Borderlands” movie, which looks like it will maintain the humorous tone of the game.

JoBlo — A small amount of footage from the live-action adaptation of Borderlands was also teased, with Bumbray saying that the colour scheme looks insane. Cate Blanchett stars as Lilith, an infamous treasure hunter with a mysterious past who reluctantly returns to her home planet to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B. The footage showcased Blanchett fighting across a cityscape, gun in hand, with Kevin Hart also appearing as Roland and Jack Black voicing Claptrap.

Cate Blanchett “Completely and Utterly Overwhelmed” by Chaplin Award Honor

On Monday night Cate Blanchett became the second-youngest recipient of Film at Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award. And though Blanchett is a two-time Oscar winner and has worked with Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro and Wes Anderson, among other luminaries, she was “completely and utterly overwhelmed,” she told The Hollywood Reporter, to have received this year’s honor.

“I don’t even know how to express it because you look at the look of previous honorees, and they’re so eclectic, but to a woman, they’re all of them are people who’ve had a deep influence on the American cultural landscape and on filmmaking at large internationally,” she added. “They’re people who I have individually revered, but collectively it’s like entering some sort of strange pantheon.”

She continued, laughing, “Hopefully, I can make it out of the building without them taking the award away from me.”

The honor is Film at Lincoln Center’s second Chaplin Award to be presented in the past 12 months, with Spike Lee receiving his honor in a delayed ceremony that took place in September.

Yet Monday night’s proceedings weren’t totally unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was announced at the top of the gala that director Todd Haynes, who was set to conduct a Q&A with Blanchett, would not be there since he had tested positive for COVID that morning. Then, the audience was told, presenter Bradley Cooper, who recently starred with Blanchett in Nightmare Alley, was also “not feeling well.” These two announcements, greeted with groans from the audience, were quickly followed by Blanchett shouting from the audience, “I’m here,” which prompted cheers.

The evening featured tributes from Scorsese, Richard Linklater, Hugh Jackman and producer Christine Vachon, who presented Blanchett with her award and shared with the audience that Haynes, though “devastated” not to be there, was apparently still feeling well enough to be frequently texting her throughout the event, wondering what they were doing. Film Comment co-deputy editor Devika Girish filled in for Haynes.

Prior to the gala, Film at Lincoln Center president Lesli Klainberg shared that despite Blanchett perhaps not being old enough for a lifetime achievement award, she had amassed enough impressive, diverse work over her nearly 30 years in the industry to make her worthy of this honor.

“I think Cate really embodies a really extraordinary artist of this time who has worked in independent films; she has worked on studio films; she works on blockbuster studio films,” Klainberg told THR. “The extraordinary variety of directors that she’s worked with, it’s just amazing to think about how many of the finest directors of our time she has been able to work with and all of her projects — we felt that she was also a person who was so active still, still working—this is not intended as an end of your career award.”

As for what’s next for her, Blanchett said she doesn’t have a particular type of project she hasn’t done that she wants to do, but she looks forward to getting a “strange ask.”

“I always think that the job I just finished is my last, and I will finally go and grow orchids in my greenhouse,” she said of her career plans. “I guess if I look back, it’s that I’ve always gravitated towards the strange ask or the ask that’s just an antidote to what I’ve done in some way. It’s an undeniable ask, and the directors I’ve worked with have usually made those asks of me. Not necessarily that I’ve achieved what I’ve wanted to achieve through that role or that production or that they have either, but the ask has been really undeniable.”

Sources: SlashFilm-TAR, JoBlo-TAR, THR-Borderlands, IGN, SlashFilm-Borderlands, JoBlo-Borderlands, THR

Additional photos from Chaplin Awards and Articles
Posted on
Apr 28, 2022

Additional photos from Chaplin Awards and Articles

Hi, blanchetters!

We have added some photos from Chaplin Awards and there are articles released the past few days since the gala.

Cate Blanchett Honored by Film at Lincoln Center

It took Film at Lincoln Center (née Film Society of Lincoln Center) 47 years to get around to honoring “the Meryl Streep from Down Under,” Australia’s own chameleon-in residence, Cate Blanchett. To give you an idea of her range: not only is she able to get away with impersonating Bob Dylan and Katharine Hepburn, she gets Oscar-nominated and even an Oscar for the effort.

The Chaplin Award (named for its first recipient back in 1972) used to come with a phalanx of the honoree’s name-brand co-stars, who’d introduce a group of film clips they appeared in, then retire to glitter up the after-party. Times have changed, and the celebrity count is way down.

Todd Haynes, who directed the actress to two Academy Award shots (Carol and I’m Not There, the movie that saw Blanchett’s turn as Dylan), was to lead “A Conversation with Cate Blanchett” on stage, but tested positive the day of and had to cancel. Strike Two: Guest Speaker Bradley Cooper, her Nightmare Alley co-star, likewise was “not feeling well and unable to attend the festivities.”

It fell (upward) to Daniel H. Stern, President of Film at Lincoln Center, to bring this brimming bad news to the Alice Tully Hall crowd. They, of course, responded en masse with a primal moan.

“I’m here!” trilled a statuesque celeb in the orchestra section. It was the evening’s honoree, and the moans turned immediately and memorably into roars of delight. She proved quite enough.

Blanchett was not entirely abandoned on her big night. Several of her directors sent filmed testaments to her considerable worth. Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater, who guided her through Where’d You Go, Bernadette, took it upon himself to do The Big Reveal: that she’s half-Texan, half-Australian. Her dad was a US Navy officer who settled in Australia after World War II.

Martin Scorsese admitted he didn’t just love making a movie with Blanchett, he felt a bit blessed by the experience. (His movie was the Howard Hughes bio The Aviator and Cate was Kate—Hepburn.) “The role called for her to do something that I think is extraordinarily difficult, which was to take a very famous and extremely recognizable person and bring her to life as a character in our film,” he said. “I found out that this was exactly the kind of challenge Cate was up for, and to watch her taking it on was really a learning experience. Did you ever see an actor who is so brave and so daring on the one hand and at the same time so confident in her ability to meet that problem head on?”

Fellow Aussies Hugh Jackman and wife Deborra-Lee Furness chimed in with cheery sentiments. “We were at drama school around the same time, and everyone was talking about Cate Blanchett,” he remembered. “You were, for us, the north star—your courage, your range of the work that you do, your commitment to theater and to your community. You are extraordinary.”

Such testimonials served as punctuation for the film clips that illustrated the depth and range of Blanchett’s performances. After the clips had run their course, the evening went into the chat portion of the program. Co-deputy editor of FALC’s Film Comment Devika Girish, having chalked up an earlier podcast with Blanchett, took on the interview duties that Haynes was to do.

The blast of Blanchett Concentrate in the film clips left the actress a little shaky. “Sorry, I’m still reeling from the reel,” she said as she joined Girish on stage for the sit-down grilling.

The blast of Blanchett Concentrate in the film clips left the actress a little shaky. “Sorry, I’m still reeling from the reel,” she said as she joined Girish on stage for the sit-down grilling.

How has growing up in Australia affected her as an artist? Blanchett greeted that question with remarkable candor: “Artists in Australia are not particularly valued by the government. There’s been a long history of Australians not consuming their own cultural products, so there’s a wonderful lack of interest in what you have to offer as an artist—which is right, because you expect the oranges to be thrown at you, and, when they’re not, you go, ‘Okay, it’s working.’

“If you have a chance to go overseas, you wouldn’t say to Rameau, ‘Thou shalt not travel.’ You do get inside other cultures by getting inside their filmmaking culture or their theatrical practice, or their literary practice, whatever it is. Australia is a very interesting place to grow up in, but I never once thought I would be an actor. I certainly didn’t feel I would be sitting here tonight. I’m sorry if I appear a bit strange, but I am massively overwhelmed about tonight’s honor.”

She pointed to the “Cate Blanchett” sign above her. “I’m not quite sure who that person is.”

Blanchett may have a right to wonder who that person is, given how many richly varied other people she has inhabited on the screen in some 90 films. They all, she was quick to confess, have the same constant: “Fear. Absolute fear. I’ve been married for quite a long time now, and so I can no longer ask my husband. I just turn over and go, ‘Andrew?’ And he goes, ‘It’ll be fine.’

“This notion of working out how you do it, working out who you are or working out your relationship to the work—it’s just nonsense, I think. When things are working, it’s all about flow, and you don’t need to ask questions until the flow stops. If it’s flowing, it’s easy, so you don’t think about the process. I think each project, each group of people that you’re with, each director, each script—reveals everything you need to do. There’s more inconsistency than consistency, but, if there was anything, it would probably be the fear of finally being found out.”

And what keeps Blanchett going back for more? “It’s the conversation with people. I’m not being disingenuous when I say that every time a film comes to an end, I feel profoundly what Liv Ullmann describes of Ingmar Bergman’s last moment on a set. She worked with him on Scenes from a Marriage, and they literally did not say goodbye to one another. He just walked out the door and left. It’s hard to say goodbye to those things. Every time I finish, I think, ‘That’s it. It’s done. I’m moving on to another chapter. There’s so much else to do in the world.’ Then you have a conversation with someone. It’s a wonderful idea. What they’re asking you to do is weird and impossible, and you think, ‘Oh, okay,’ and you do it again. You start thinking about time left.”

This thought led Blanchett to remember the 2010 Chaplin Award winner, director Robert Altman: “Years ago, we were talking about making a version of Mata Hari, and we were talking about dates, and I was trying to wiggle something around,” she recalled. “Do you remember that wonderful documentary that Laurie Anderson made about the face where you split the face in half, and each half projects something different? I said, ‘I don’t know if we can do it in the next six months,’ and he looked at me with the death side of his face, and he said, ‘Cate, I don’t have a lot of time.’ You do start thinking, ‘Well, how much time do I have?’”

Stage
Dinner
Arrivals
Outside

Cate Blanchett, mask with message: “Stop bombing hospitals”

Cate was seen recently wearing a mask that says “STOP Bombing Hospitals”. Last Sunday, she had moderated a Q&A for FOR SAMA — the filmmakers of this documentary are also advocating for the targeted bombing at hospitals to stop. They have started the campaign #StopBombingHospitals. You can find more information about the campaign on their official website.

April 27th 2022 marks 6 years since the brutal attack on Al Quds hospital in Aleppo – an attack you see in For Sama Film. It is on this anniversary that we are launching a global action to show solidarity with all brave medical colleagues who are saving lives under fire.

The international community has failed to hold the perpetrators of these war crimes to account. This is why Russia has been allowed to repeat these crimes over and over again – testing their war tactics over many years and now targeting healthcare facilities in Ukraine.

— Dr. Hamza al-Kateab

The actress was photographed at New York’s JFK airport. Always, even on social media, she has been urging people to donate and help those who fled Ukraine due to the war.

The reference to the situation between Russia and Ukraine seems evident, also because Blanchett, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), has always expressed herself clearly on the ongoing war. “As the conflict and tragedy hit Ukraine, the world is watching,” she said in a video posted on the organization’s Twitter: Cate Blanchett has repeatedly called for donations to help UNHCR give life-saving aid to people fleeing Ukraine.

Her appeal did not go unheeded by the private sector which donated $200 million to help fleeing people. “Right now, all eyes in the world are on Ukraine. We stand in solidarity with people who are fleeing for their lives, whose families have been destroyed. We thank the private sector for their overwhelming generosity,” Blanchett said.

Cate Blanchett’s kids totally ‘disinterested’ in mom’s fame

Cate Blanchett’s kids couldn’t care less that their mom is a movie star.

“They have no idea, no idea,” the Australian actress told Page Six at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall Monday night, where she was honored with the prestigious Chaplin Award.

“I told them, ‘Oh I’m going to New York for 36 hours. I’ll be back on Wednesday…’ One of them is getting an award at school, and they went, ‘Oh, OK, have a good time.’”

Blanchett shares four children – Dashiell, 20, Roman, 18, Ignatius, 14, and Edith, 7 – with husband Andrew Upton.

The “Don’t Look Up” star, 52, told Page Six that her kids are totally “disinterested” in her fame, but “in the best possible, healthiest way.”

Regardless of how her children feel, Blanchett’s accolades are highly impressive and she’s regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation.

In her years in the spotlight, she’s won two Oscars – for her roles in “The Aviator” and “Blue Jasmine” – and doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.

“I was talking to somebody about the notion of arriving somewhere and how dangerous that can be when you think you’ve arrived. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I think it’s about a process of constantly becoming, like there’s a flow to it,” she told us.

“Every time someone wins an Oscar, there are five or six, maybe 15 other people who were equally deserving. It just happens to be your timing,” she continued.

“But, you know, not being from this filmmaking culture, and being recognized by this filmmaking culture tonight at the Chaplin Awards – such an international set of previous recipients – it’s such a deep and profound honor.”

Film at Lincoln Center Tributes Chaplin Winner Cate Blanchett

Glittering in flowing black sequins, two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, the second-youngest recipient of Film at Lincoln Center’s coveted 47th Chaplin Award, was ushered to her seat at Alice Tully Hall to resounding applause. As Film at Lincoln Center president Daniel H. Stern intoned the usual litany of praise and tribute to “one of the most versatile and talented actresses working today,” he eventually had to inform the crowd that the two starry presenters of the night, “Carol” filmmaker Todd Haynes (“Ooooh,” groaned the audience) and “Nightmare Alley” star Bradley Cooper (“ughh,” they moaned), couldn’t make the event due to a direct COVID hit, in Haynes’ case. Cooper was under the weather, he said. (A Searchlight source said Cooper’s daughter had COVID.)

A voice pierced the darkness. “I’m here!” cried Blanchett. The audience cheered.

Over the course of the night, between videos of former winners (including Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Sidney Poitier, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Robert Altman, and Meryl Streep) and Blanchett stans like fellow-Aussie Hugh Jackman, Martin Scorsese (“The Aviator”), and Richard Linklater (“Where’d You Go, Bernadette?”) who explained how Blanchett was a good ol’ Texas name, Blanchett and others had fun throwing a bit of shade on Cooper.

And later, when the co-deputy editor of Film Comment, Devika Girish, gracefully took over the career interview from Haynes, Blanchett responded charmingly to the younger woman’s queries about running the gamut of characters from Queen Elizabeth and Katharine Hepburn to a Middle Earth elf and Norse villain and working for directors Peter Jackson, Gillian Armstrong, Terrence Malick, Steven Soderbergh, and David Fincher. Like many actresses, it turns out that Blanchett is motivated by a combination of confidence, fear, and going with the flow. And if she’d had another career, she might have studied dance with Pina Bausch.

Finally, Blanchett loves cinema. “We have had a collective experience over the last two years to a greater or lesser degree that has been deeply, profoundly confronting,” she said,  “and dealing with our situation through allegory and metaphor, which is what film is. It has been providing us with a collective catharsis. Our cinema is ripe for an enormous lift, because we want to be together in a room, we want to be experiencing something in the dark together with strangers and with friends, and being united by something that we’re seeing together.”

After a rough weekend, Film at Lincoln Center’s Lesli Klainberg and Eugene Hernandez were relieved that the event went smoothly after scrambling to pull it together. At the end of the night, Haynes’ producer Christine Vachon took on the presenting role. And at the elegant sponsor and patron black-tie dinner at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theatre, Vachon explained how Haynes arrived from Portland, Oregon not feeling at all well. She got him tested, and sure enough, he was positive.

As for Blanchett, these days she just rolls with the punches, she told me, as she looks forward to getting back to work in London on Alfonso Cuaron’s Apple TV+ mini-series “Disclaimer,” about television documentary journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, in which she and Sacha Baron Cohen play the parents of Kodi Smit-McPhee.

Cate Blanchett Says Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is ‘Very Dangerous’

Director Adam McKay’s Netflix film “Don’t Look Up,” which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance and more A-listers, made a splash last winter for how the dark, political comedy eerily mirrored real life. The film tackled issues of climate change and media misinformation, and one fictional tech billionaire character hit even closer to home after Elon Musk and Twitter agreed to a $44 billion deal on Monday.

“It’s dangerous,” Blanchett told Variety about Musk’s Twitter takeover, at the Chaplin Award Gala in New York on Monday. “That’s all I have to say, it’s very, very dangerous.”

Rylance’s character, Peter Isherwell, an eccentric tech CEO who profits off a comet hurtling toward Earth, was based partly on Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. In “Don’t Look Up,” the comet becomes a politicized and misinformed issue, as Isherwell helps spin the catastrophe into a cash-grab and job-creating scheme that picks up widespread support. After Musk’s shocking Twitter deal, the “Don’t Look Up” character seems even more ripped from the headlines.

“I think the future is often imagined in the mind of the artist,” Blanchett told Variety. “Adam wrote this well and truly pre-pandemic. It was really interesting to see how much meaning an audience brings to a work. If the audience viewed the same script, the same story performed in exactly the same way, pre-pandemic, it would’ve been a very different response to the takeaway than the audience has now. That speaks to the power of the zeitgeist and the times in which we live.”

In “Don’t Look Up,” Blanchett played a talk-show host who dismissed the urgency of the comet disaster live on air. Earlier this month, a “Good Morning Britain” interview went viral after the TV anchor downplayed a climate activist’s serious concerns about the world’s growing oil use.

The Oscar best picture-nominated film was one of many on display at the 47th Chaplin Award Gala, where Blanchett was being honored. The two-time Academy Award winner became the second-youngest recipient of the Chaplin Award. Past honorees include Spike Lee, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Streep, Tom Hanks and other film icons.

The Lincoln Center celebration included several montages of Blanchett’s work, including “Blue Jasmine,” “The Aviator,” “Carol,” “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Nightmare Alley” and more. There were also video tributes from some of her directors and collaborators, like Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Richard Linklater and James Gray.

However, the celebration was not without a few hitches; presenters Todd Haynes and Bradley Cooper were unable to attend, as planned. Haynes, who directed Blanchett in “Carol,” tested positive for COVID on Monday morning, and Cooper, her “Nightmare Alley” co-star, was “not feeling well,” Film at Lincoln Center chair Dan Stern announced at the beginning of the ceremony. Blanchett was quick to poke fun at Cooper’s absence.

“There’s a few empty seats there; there’s a few people who either didn’t want to come up and said they had COVID or actually really had COVID — Bradley!” Blanchett joked. During her acceptance speech, she went after her co-star again. “I want to thank all those people who’ve been paid to say such wonderful things about me this evening. And to all of those who offered to be here, but couldn’t due to contracting COVID — rest up — or laziness, whatever.”

Sources: The Observer, Corriere, Page Six, Indiewire, Variety

47th Chaplin Awards
Posted on
Apr 26, 2022

47th Chaplin Awards

Hello, Cate Blanchett fans!

Last night Cate was honored at the 47th Chaplin Awards by Film at Lincoln Center. Christine Vachon, who is the producer for both I’m Not There and Carol, presented the award to Cate. Check the videos and photos mostly shared by fans who were at the event.

According to Film at Lincoln Center a recording of the event will be available but as we wait you can check Cate’s speech recorded by an attendee.


Cate Blanchett at For Sama Screening and New Podcast Interview
Posted on
Apr 25, 2022

Cate Blanchett at For Sama Screening and New Podcast Interview

Happy Monday, everyone!

Tonight in New York, Cate will be honored at the 47th Chaplin Awards but while we wait Film Comment has released the podcast interview they did with her discussing her most memorable roles. Cate also moderated a Q&A last night for the documentary For Sama.

Podcast

Every year, Film at Lincoln Center honors a luminary of the film industry with the Chaplin Award. This year’s recipient, the 47th, is an actress who has essayed some of the most iconic performances of the last quarter-century, and whose nearly superhuman versatility is matched by the consistency of her craft: Cate Blanchett. In an in-depth tribute essay, the scholar Amy Herzog writes that “Blanchett’s almost otherworldly range has generated certain tropes in reviews of her work: she is often described as ‘chameleonic,’ or said to ‘disappear into the character. But these takes, which suggest an innate and natural ability for imitation, or even an erasure of the self, don’t capture the careful calibrations of Blanchett’s craft.”

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Blanchett to dig into those calibrations and the process behind some of the most interesting performances of her career. We discussed her iconic turns in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, and some deeper cuts, like her early roles in the Australian miniseries Bordertown and Tom Tykwer’s Heaven (which was written by Krystof Kieslowski).

— Film Comment

FOR SAMA Screening

Cate moderated a Q&A for the documentary FOR SAMA after a screening at Forest Row Townhall. The documentary is directed by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts and has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards. The screening was originally scheduled in March 29th 2020 but was cancelled due to COVID lockdown. Cate has also previously hosted a screening of the movie in November 2019.

FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.

There is also campaign to end targeted attack on hospitals in Syria. You can check more information about #ActionForSama here.

Source: For Sama

Cate Blanchett talks about addressing the climate crisis in a new podcast
Posted on
Apr 17, 2022

Cate Blanchett talks about addressing the climate crisis in a new podcast

Happy Sunday, everyone!

There is a new interview from The Observer with Cate and Danny Kennedy for their Audible original podcast, Climate of Change. Check out the magazine scan and you can read a part of it below.

Cate Blanchett talks about addressing the climate crisis in a new podcast

Cate Blanchett is Australian. I mention this fact because I’d forgotten it, somehow, so her manner of speaking — upbeat, front-footed, Aussie-accented — comes as a surprise. And I’ve spent quite some time hearing her talk over the past couple of days, as she has a new podcast, Climate of Change, which she hosts with her friend Danny Kennedy, another Australian. Kennedy is a CEO of an environmental non-profit, New Energy Nexus, and runs the California Clean Energy Fund. Their podcast, as you may have guessed from the title, is about the climate emergency. But before you come over all world-weary and what’s-the-point, before you get tetchy about preachy celebrities telling us stuff we already know, you might as well stop. Blanchett is already there.

“You can recycle up the wazoo, Miranda,” she says (told you she was Australian), “but it can just make you feel more cross and isolated and panicky… I get that. What we’re trying to do with the podcast is to turn the magnet towards optimism in these incredibly pessimistic times.:

We’re talking via video link, but Blanchett has her camera turned off. Kennedy, who’s in his office in Oakland, California, hasn’t and he wanders around, showing us the view from the window (just some more offices really). Blanchett’s location is a secret, due to heavy-handed PRs and her natural privacy, though I’d guess she’s in the UK (she lives in Sussex).

The location doesn’t really matter, of course, as they’re talking about a worldwide problem. The climate crisis is very real — we need to halve the world’s carbon emissions by 2030 —and becoming ever more so for those living in Europe, with our reliance on Russian gas. If you think about it all too hard, you can panic.

And Blanchett does, she says. In the first episode, she chats into the mic as she drives her electric car towards London and discusses how overwhelmed she can feel by the “tide of bad news”. She describes herself as a “mother of four” (the oldest is 20, the youngest seven) and an “optimistic pessimist”, and confesses to range anxiety as she forgot to plug in her car to charge last night. Her role in the show is to represent the listener, which is weird as she’s globally famous. But Blanchett’s approach is relatable: she wonders aloud if making an effort is worth it. Why bother recycling, up the wazoo or no, if the tipping point to the end of the worlds is so close and the people in power are still locked into fossil fuels?

She and Kennedy made Climate of Change earlier this year, mostly in a studio in east London. They have some strong guests: Adam McKay, the director of Don’t Look Up, makes an appearance, as does Prince William, to talk about his Earthshot prize. (He explains it very well, actually; it sounds much more interesting than I’d realized.) Still, at the start of the series, in common with many climate emergency podcasts, the discussion can feel rather broad, with smudgy chat about tech and innovation and the “disruptive decade”. At one point, someone says” “We are the stories we tell ourselves,” which might be true but doesn’t help that much with the gas bill. By episode two, however, the show is focusing on real-life solutions and these are undoubtedly encouraging. We meet a Filipino woman who’s designed a clean energy lamp that local fishermen can use; and the Londoner who’s brought gardening to train station. One California company, OhmConnect, has such a good idea about reducing at-home electricity that I try to sign up. But it’s not yet available in the UK.

What they’re trying to do with the podcast, say Kennedy, is to appeal to people like me. To show us tired recyclers that the answers to environmental catastrophe are already out there. “The choir has heard the doom and gloom song for a long time,” he says, “and sung it from the song sheet, like a good choir would. What they haven’t been taught is the song about solutions and the fact we’ve got them.”

“A lot of people are feeling fatigued,” says Blanchett. “I think we need a sense of, ‘No don’t worry, these changes are happening.’ Because they are.”

Blanchett and Kennedy met in Sydney in the early 1990s. They were part of the same social circle – Kennedy wrote a play with Andrew Upton, now Blanchett’s husband. Later, in 2008, Blanchett and Upton were appointed co-artistic directors of Sydney Theatre Company and decided to try to make the building, an old timber-and-glass warehouse, as ecologically sound as possible. They enlisted Kennedy to help. He brought in consultants – “one guy called Gavin Gilchrist: Cate, if you recall, the fellow who did the toilet flushes” – and helped redo the insulation to make the building “tighter and better, even though it was a pretty old, leaky, wooden construction”.

The biggest proposal was the installation of solar energy panels, which proved difficult to get past heritage rules and the general cynicism of Sydney’s county council. “We were met by a lot of internal skepticism and external opposition,” remembers Blanchett. “You know: ‘What has this to do with a cultural institution, what does it have to do with making theatre, why are we bothering?’ So we thought: ‘OK, we’ll be at the theatre company for 10 years and we have a whole suite of ambitions. And the solar panels will probably be the last one we achieve, if we do.’ And it was the first one we achieved.”

It took two years. There are now 1,906 solar panels powering lights, ventilation and air con across the building. Kennedy thinks that Blanchett and Upton’s theatre project was “a catalystic moment” that kickstarted a sense in Australia that solar power was viable and cost-effective; the country is now, he says, the biggest solar market in the developed world. Blanchett thinks of it as a “symbolic gesture” that, when added to an industry shift, “all adds up”.

So she and Kennedy have known each other for ages (Blanchett recently found some old photos of his daughters when they were little) and then, last summer, Kennedy came to stay with Blanchett and her family in Cornwall. They took him to the Eden Project, which he loved, and the podcast project was started there. They visited “these old mines that are engaged in modern, clean-energy transition minerals and materials production – I’m a geek, I love that,” he says. For Blanchett, the show was “a much more primal urge. We sort of had to. I had so many questions.”

I ask her about using celebrity to get attention on important issues. “Look,” she says, “if you have your two minutes in the sun, you can highlight solar technology or you can highlight an underwear line. But I’m genuine when I say that there were a lot of questions, embarrassingly ignorant questions, that I’ve been asking Danny over the decades. And I thought, ‘Well, I can’t be alone.’ When you ask a question, however ignorant or ill-informed it may be, you’re asking to open a door to a deeper understanding.”

Climate of Change podcast is out now on Audible.

The rest of the interview is on the magazine scan.

The New Review – April 17th 2022

Climate of Change Interview and Promos
Posted on
Apr 15, 2022

Climate of Change Interview and Promos

Hello, everyone!

You can now watch the interview with Imogen Heap, who is a guest on episode 6 of Climate of Change podcast. The podcast is now available on Audible. Check out two promotional videos below.

Promotional Videos