Cate Blanchett saw in the New Year in the Arctic, with her husband and four children, by cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in. It was -30°C and she wore a "funny hat" for the cold and, "It was fabulous," because, she says, "Everything ... paused."
The restaurant is just beginning to fill with evening diners when Blanchett slides between the tables in her tartan "chicken feeding coat" and striped shirt, collar popped.
"Who are they murdering out the back?" she shouts — the noise of dough being pounded in the kitchen sounds as if they’re beating somebody to death. "I always thought, if the acting thing didn’t work out, which it still might not, I would love to be a Foley artist," creating sound effects for film, smashing watermelons, clicking cups. "Yes, I can burp to order." Oh? "Not fart, though. One of my primary school friends, vomiting sounds was her trick. Are you any good at noises?" I attempt, quite sweetly, a generic beatbox. "That sounded slightly like a kangaroo. I’ve been away from Australia a long time, though, so ... "
Of course she can burp to order. She is Cate Blanchett, two-time Oscar winner, one of our greatest living actors. This is a person who, at 55, is balancing Hollywood movie stardom and motherhood, while also maintaining the freedom to regularly veer away from the family blockbusters or exquisite thrillers and take a part that is gloriously insane, like a German prime minister set upon by wanking bog-men (Rumours, 2024) or the dancer in a Sparks video (The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, 2023). The women she plays (and, as in her sly portrayal of Bob Dylan, men) are unpredictable, inscrutable and occasionally icy. Which takes us back to the Arctic.
"The only thing keeping me remotely sane at the moment is getting into cold water every day," Blanchett says. "I get up and get in. Five minutes and it just brings everything back down. Because you have to connect with where you are." Do you not ... feel like you’re dying? "Well, I don’t know what your experience of childbirth was?" We digress, tea is drunk. "You just have to breathe and be there. You can resist that pain or you can surrender to it. And I’ve done it long enough now that I can return to that place during the day. Otherwise, you know, my brain’s like a Pac-Man."
You have to start as you mean to continue, she says.
"I think that’s true of relationships, friendships, any enterprise. It’s a new day. And I’m just trying to start my day as I mean to continue — connected and open-hearted. That’s what I’m trying to do." Is it working? "It feels like a monumental challenge at the moment. My job is to connect. And there are a lot of nefarious actors at the moment striving for us to separate ourselves from each other." She purses her lips. "It’s not my daily protest, but it was a magical holiday."
Blanchett’s new film is Black Bag, a spy thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh in which Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play married intelligence agents whose loyalty to each other is tested by a case — the black bag is the suitcase required for a covert job you can’t tell anyone about, even your husband.
In some ways, I suggest, their marriage, with its secrecy built in, is ideal, in that it has the space required to maintain desire. "Yes, it’s all about the things that are not said, which is really interesting to play. I think it’s a fascinating way to look at a marriage now, because it’s meant to be all about honesty, having everything out there. But what does that mean for desire and what does it actually mean for trust, if there are no secrets that you’re prepared to keep?"
Blanchett has been married to Andrew Upton, a playwright, since 1997. What did this film teach her about relationships? "Every marriage is different, but the ones that last are based on a profound trust and, I think, not having a stranglehold over your partner. Or an expectation, really, that you can ever truly know one another."
Why does she love her partner?
"On Tuesday it might be his beard and on Wednesday it might be the way he eats cherries. And it’s interesting, some relationships which you think are incredible and full of passion, you realise, oh, they’re actually competing with one another. Or they need the partner to be something in relief of themselves, rather than being their own entity."
She and Upton both do the cold plunges every morning, "before going off into our separate little worlds," but no more swimming talk, boring, sorry.
In her role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Blanchett recently announced a new grant scheme for refugee film-makers, offering up to €100,000 (about $NZ191,000) each to five people creating work about the experiences of displaced people.
"When I began working with them, the number of people who were displaced around the world was approaching 60 million, now it’s over 120 million. And a vast majority of those are children, which, as a mother of four ... " she shudders. "I do feel there’s an obvious intersection between what’s going on with our climate, our collective climate, and displacement. It’s not going away."
So these film-makers’ perspectives, "are important to break down the preconceptions we have about individuals who are displaced, the false and dehumanising narratives that are out there".
Does she feel a responsibility, having a profile, to take action? It’s simpler than that, she tuts.
"The more generationally, culturally and, from a gender point of view, diverse any room of any industry in any walk of life is, the more fascinating the conversation is going to be." She shrugs.
"I think there is an urge for people to gather. That may be around a screen watching a film or protesting, but people want to be in groups, and you hope that those groups are communities and not tribes."
What does she see as the main difference between the two?
"Tribalism has an aggression that is so destructive and I think communities are about finding points of connection with people." She looks at me sharply, catching herself. "I don’t want to sound too pompous or sentimental, but — breaking bread together or playing sport together or going to a movie together, we don’t have to have the same political views, or sexual orientation or the same culture,
but there’s an urge to find pleasure in life and to not rid other people of their ability to seek that."
As she’s talking, I’m reminded of a dress she wore last year at Cannes — it appeared to be a simple black gown, but when she lifted the white hem to reveal a green silk lining against the red carpet she suddenly became the Palestinian flag. At the time she neither confirmed or denied the intention. "I don’t know that talking about any dress that one wore could have done or will do anything to affect what is going on in Gaza," she laughs, darkly. "But I think the lack of listening to people’s point of view and how quickly toxic that conversation became was heartbreaking." She waits, serene now, for another question.
Do Blanchett’s characters stay with her?
"It’s not necessarily that the characters stay with you, but it’s a little bit like being in a new relationship, in that through the prism of the dialogue and the fabulous sex you’re having with that partner, the world seems suddenly different. It depends on if it’s all-consuming, like [Lydia] Tár or Blanche DuBois, then it does affect your dream life, too. But the best antidote to that, I think, is having four children."
Are they interested in her work?
"Well," she says evenly, "I love talking to my kids. The three boys have got this language they speak between one another that’s kind of beautiful and impenetrable. But they’re constantly dismissing me."
Oh dear.
"Yeah, fast-track humility going on — I’m constantly lampooned and discredited."
In what way?
"I’m an irrelevance around the kitchen table, in a great way. Everyone’s an equal player, but sometimes my husband and I are less equal than the rest of them. They’re quite a force."
She’s mentioned the idea of giving up acting more than once.
Why is that? Nerves?
"Nerves and fear of letting people down and not being able to give what, in the architecture of the thing, you need to reach. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t and irrespective, you have to show up."
Is that fantasy also about the life not lived?
"Yes, possibly Dr Freud. And I’ve had a delightful avoidance of that by, I suppose, temporarily stepping into other people’s lives. But one day I’m going to grow up and get a proper job."
Foley! The chef is no longer pounding.
"Foley!"
Her press director is hovering, waiting to accompany her to a screening. I applaud her energy, as well as everything else, including the ice baths.
"I get four hours’ sleep each night," she grimaces. "So I’ll die soon. You heard it here first!"
— The Observer
