Lively’s success tied to ‘security’ of having family
‘Café Society’ star picks work that keeps the brood together
On the sun-drenched NEW YORK steps of France’s famed Palais des Festivals, Blake Lively was anointed red-carpet royalty at May’s Cannes Film Festival, thanks in part to her fairy-tale frocks.
“It’s funny, I didn’t realize I was dressing like a Disney princess until people told me,” says Lively, 28, sampling a spread of pastries and gelato at Tribeca’s Greenwich Hotel. Her favorite may have been Vivienne Westwood Couture’s powder-blue, Cin
derella- style creation. “I remember going to Disneyland as a kid and thinking, ‘Ah, I want to do that one day.’ You get to live out a bit of your childhood fantasies when you wear a ball gown like that.”
It was Lively’s second time at the festival (after accompanying husband Ryan Reynolds in 2014) but her first for the premiere of a film in which she stars: Woody Allen’s Café Society (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide July 29). The filmmaker’s latest is a 1930s-set screwball comedy, following an ambitious young romantic (Jesse Eisenberg) torn between two women: a beguiling Hollywood assistant (Kristen Stewart) and a scintillating New York socialite (Lively).
When she auditioned, “I didn’t know anything about the movie,” Lively says. “It didn’t matter. It was being part of a film with an iconic filmmaker and somebody that writes complicated women.”
Lively was a natural fit for Allen’s material, her co-star says. “He encourages his actors to fill in the spaces between his dialogue with their dialogue,” Eisenberg says. “She’s really funny, she’s quick and was comfortable in a potentially daunting situation.”
Less comfortable was the flap that erupted when a French comedian aimed a rape joke at Allen on the festival’s opening night. “That was very strange, to have people joking about such sensitive things,” she says. “To speak to anyone’s personal life is a very, very dangerous thing.”
But Lively has few qualms discussing her own life. The actress has been married for nearly four years to Reynolds, with whom she has an 18-month-old daughter, James, and another child on the way.
Keeping their brood intact is paramount to the pair, who travel together and won’t shoot films simultaneously.
“We’ve both given up projects that we really love because we can’t keep our family together,” Lively says. “People often think their career is something they have to chase and maintain, but for us, we said, ‘Let’s always chase and maintain our personal life.’
“This is a career that’s like the stock market: You’ve got to stay hot while you’re hot. But your family, that’s the real thing that gives you security and success and happiness.” After Society and last month’s
The Shallows, which surpassed box-office expectations, Lively will star in All I See Is You, in which she plays a blind woman who regains her eyesight. She calls it the “most rewarding acting experience” she’s ever had.
“There are so few roles for women that are dynamic and interesting, so to be able to have done three ... I just feel fortunate,” Lively says, breaking off a piece of a chocolate chip cookie. “I hope that people like these movies, and I get to continue doing what I love.
“If not, I’ll just eat dessert all day, apparently.”