Cate Blanchett Waits For Phone Calls From Woody Allen

There’s a fantastic interview with Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett over at the Guardian today. In it, she discusses everything from her fellow celebrities to climate change and even addresses the loss of her father.

On climate change, Blanchett is very direct:

We need to keep switching up the language around climate change.For so long we’ve talked about sacrifice and people get discredited for what they haven’t given up. [Celebrities] get criticised for taking flights, but the truth is someone like Leo [DiCaprio] takes fewer flights than he’s asked to. If we want it to stay on the radar, we need to focus on the fact there’s a lot of opportunity.

She says working with Woody Allen is sometimes a mystery, because he isn’t the kind of director easily approached with material. Blanchett, who is getting early Oscar buzz for Allen’s Blue Jasmine said the director is more likely to randomly call one day and say “I’ve got a script I want you to read.” Oh to be a little bird on the other end of that phone conversation.

Blanchett said she lost her father when he was only 40, but it didn’t hit her until her husband reached the same age himself: “I was euphoric at [my husband’s] birthday party, like a weight had been lifted. And I thought: “Now there’s the detritus.”

And of course, everyone wants to know about her famous alabaster skin:

I’ve always been pale.It’s partly to do with being from Australia, where the hole in the ozone layer is at its most intense, and partly to do with my mother, who very quickly put an end to me sunbathing in baby oil as a teenager. I would go red as a lobster. She told me to accept what I had.

But the best quote is about how she reacted to winning her first Oscar in 2004, for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in The
Aviator:

“You know that when you win an Oscar and you walk offstage and your first thought is: “Oh God, I’ve peaked.”

OMG I am sure I speak for everyone here when I say no you haven’t, Cate. No way. No you have not.