I DIOSYNCRATIC BEAUTY
THE CHANGING FACE OF CATE BLANCHETT
things the kids will eat without sugar. I’ve gone a bit Heston Blumenthal, going through all the chemical compositions with my son, trying to work out how you make things sweet without sugar.”
She makes it all sound so normal. But it’s hard to know how any actress stays sane. It’s not just the life, it’s the craft. Playing Blanche DuBois on screen allegedly tipped Vivien Leigh over the edge. Blanchett took on Blanche three seasons in a row – in Sydney, Washington and New York. Then came the Blue Jasmine re-rendering of the Tennessee Williams original. “Woody kept saying ‘this is not Streetcar’, but Blanche was clearly a touchstone for me.” It took its toll. When the producers wanted the stage interpretation of Streetcar to transfer to Broadway she declined. “I didn’t think I could play her for another three months. I’d lost a lot of weight and my hair was falling out.”
She seems to have approached the making of the Sì commercial with the same enthusiasm as any of her potential Oscar-winning parts. “It’s directed by Anne Fontaine, whom I love, and it was genuinely challenging. Mr Armani was clear that he wanted to make a series of very distilled, heightened emotional states without necessarily having a character – and make all of them exquisite… I’m glad we got to shoot it on the beach,” she laughs. And yes, she likes perfume. “For me fragrance is about memory, even more than imagery. It’s a really subtle but important way in which women can express themselves.”
With three sons and a daughter, she’s ideally placed to... “screw her up?” she quips. I was going to suggest you’re in pole position to observe gender stereotyping, I say. “People have been talking a lot about that recently,” she muses. “Maybe it’s because of the subject nature of Carol, and a general trend in society. But we won’t be experimenting with our daughter.”
Regarding gender stereotyping, I have to ask Blanchett about clothes, not only because we’re inhabiting the fashion pages, but because she’s deployed them so brilliantly throughout her career. “I spent my first pay cheque after drama school on an Armani suit, which I’ve still got – and wear. Clothes are a huge part of the acting process. In a way they’re the most creative aspect, because you don’t always get a lot of rehearsal time, so the costumes can help coalesce all kinds of ideas. Todd [Haynes, the director of Carol] made a point of attending the hair and make-up sessions – all good directors do.”
For someone whose red carpet choices have been as bold and eccentric as her roles, she says decisions are made quickly. Despite claiming that her favourite wardrobe piece is trousers, she can certainly work a ball dress. “The Giles Deacon I wore in Cannes [15 metres of silk, print inspired by a fax machine] was an easy, instant pick,” she says. “I saw it on a shoot and thought, ‘Where else could you wear that?’ When you decide by committee it kills the spontaneity. I probably get shocking reviews on the red carpet, but I don’t read them.”
All actresses say this, and if I believed any of them, it would be her. “Of course I read the news,” she says. “But if I see anything about me, I just look at the pictures. I’m very superficial.”
She still finds assessing her performances hard. “The first time you watch yourself in any role, it’s excruciating. The more you do it, the more you can treat it objectively and make comments like, ‘Oh, that was a bad choice.’ But it’s never easy.”
Although latterly actresses in their late forties and fifties (Blanchett is 48), seem to be finding more satisfying roles – see Streep, Kidman, Scott Thomas – the scrutiny on their looks remains intense. When I got back to London after interviewing Blanchett, the question all women asked was: “How’s she looking?”
The complex answer is that she has an idiosyncratic beauty that can look masculine one minute, fragile the next. Even without the wigs and make-up, she could probably morph from Elizabeth I to Bob Dylan and – her next role – Lucille Ball. It all seems to be in her eyes.
The simpler answer is that she looks precisely how you’d want a sane, intelligent woman to look: animated, with crow’s feet when she smiles. She’s wearing another Armani suit – this time white, with grey stilettos.
Blanchett clearly takes care of herself, stays out of the sun, keeps slim rather than bone-thin, uses copious amounts of SKII, the upmarket skin care she advertises, works with the best hair and make-up teams (the make-up artist Mary Greenwell is godmother to Edith, testament perhaps, to how much time actresses spend with their beauty squadrons), but she’s far too smart to neuter the tools that won her two Oscars.