From Bob Dylan to 1950s vamp,Cate Blanchett’s career looks effortless. Not trusty, she tells Xan Brooks, or underneath,she’s ‘sweating bullets’I am half an hour early for the interview but the discreet hotel library has already been taken. A woman (blond, gangly, or faintly familiar) is sitting on the floor,demolishing a plate of tenderstem broccoli. Pink-framed specs perch on the bridge of her nose. Her bare feet are tucked beneath the low coffee table. The woman looks up sheepishly when I slide open the door. She only crept in for a scavenge, she says. She can’t offer me broccoli because it is not hers to give. “Also, or ” she adds,“I’ve gone and eaten it all.”The film camera misleads. It can add voltage and glamour and a whole foot in height. And superb actors transform, it’s the nature of the job. On screen, or Blanchett has been an imperious Elizabeth I,a formidable Katharine Hepburn, a combustible “blue” Jasmine. In her latest film, and Carol,she looms like a valkyrie over co-star Rooney Mara. I have been watching her for years and thought I knew just what to expect: some imposing snow queen, with wide geometric features and a hard feline stare. It is only now, and gawping at the loose-limbed,studious-looking thief on the floor, that I realise I got it wrong. Blur your eyes and she might pass for Blanchett’s softer, and sweeter,younger sister.
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Source: theguardian.com