Cate Blanchett on being a baddie in the latest Thor film
The actress talks about her new role as a baddie
ABOUT TIME In Thor: Ragnarok, Cate plays Hela, the Goddess of Death, who’s been imprisoned for millennia – and now that she’s been unleashed “she ain’t getting back in that box”, the actress says.
In the third instalment of the film franchise, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his team fight the evil Hela to save the world from Ragnarok (the end of the world in Norse mythology).
“It’s ridiculous,” was Cate’s response when asked how she felt about Hela being the first female villain in 19 years and 15 Marvel movies.
“There’s so much untapped potential villainy in women. It’s really exciting.”
GIRL POWER Strong women have been a theme in Cate’s life since she was a young girl growing up in Melbourne, Australia. After her father died of a heart attack when she was 10 her mother, June, gave up her job as a teacher and became a property developer in order to support her children and send them to private school. “She was so resilient,” Cate (48) says, “and my grandmother had always lived with us so I grew up in a female household.”
JUST PLAIN MOM She might be one of Tinseltown’s foremost leading ladies and have legions of fans, but Cate reveals that her children – Dashiel (15), Roman (13), Iganatius (9) and adopted daughter Edith (2) – aren’t among them.
“They know you with baby vomit on your pyjamas, and so to see you made up, pretending to be someone else, or in interview mode where you’re trying to string a sentence together, they just think it’s really weird. It makes them feel uncomfortable,” she says.
STAYING DOWN UNDER “Having four children and a partner who’s working, it’s a balancing act,” reveals the actress who’s been married to playwright Andrew Upton (51) for 20 years. “So often it’s, ‘Is this happening in the school holidays?’ ”
But Cate doesn’t mind being picky about film projects due to being based in Sydney, Australia, as she’s not one for the glitz and glamour of life in Los Angeles. She’d much rather be back home, she reveals. “The wonderful thing I have is I live in Australia,” she says.
“‘ What?! The phone line’s really bad. Sorry I can’t . . .’ That’s when I resort to every cliché: ‘I’m really sorry, a kangaroo just got run over outside our house’.”