Cate Blanchett Quotes

I think you're peripatetic when you work in this industry. My husband and I are assuming the role of co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. But as long as the film industry will have me, I will have it.

Film just chews up actors like nobody's business, and I'm not particularly interested in being chewed up. I think the camera can only look at somebody's face for so long. I guess you have to accept the roles you think are right at the time. You can build a career, but these days there doesn't seem to be that much interest in people being actors.

I think when you fall in love, whether you're heterosexual, transgender, gay, lesbian, whatever, straight, you feel like it's happening to you for the first time.

There is not a lot of separation between work and home life.

You can't really watch a theater performance by yourself. You can watch a movie by yourself, though.

When you’ve had children, your body changes; there’s history to it. I like the evolution of that history; I’m fortunate to be with somebody who likes the evolution of that history. I think it’s important to not eradicate it. I look at someone’s face and I see the work before I see the person... You’re certainly not staving off the inevitable. And if you’re doing it out of fear, that fear’s still going to be seen through your eyes. The windows to your soul, they say.

I had never done anything with blue screen before, or prosthetics, or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But, to be honest, I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head.Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

I'm partial to a nice cup of vodka. I normally just drink it really simple with a little bit of lemon.

That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.

Particularly at the moment, it's an incredibly optimistic thing to bring children into the world.

I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees - I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?

If you over plan New Year's Eve it's going to be a disaster so you have to be alive to changes.

When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.

I live my life parallel with my work, and they are both equally important. I'm always amazed how much people talk about celebrity and fame. I don't understand the attraction.

Lazy thinking is not creative or productive.

After a run of several night events, you begin to appreciate the solitude and the quiet backstage.

I never really think about my gender, first and foremost - until a door is closed to you. Until you can see a parallel opportunity with a man in a similar place in his career and you think, That opportunity is not open to me or my fellow actresses. That's interesting.

I'm not a big believer in linear paths. I would always have these sort of five-year plans and think, 'Ok, I wouldn't mind to try to get here in five years.'

I just don't see myself as the heroine in my own narrative.

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.

I don't think about being beautiful or not being beautiful. ... It's more about feeling confident inside your own skin really and thinking about yourself as little as possible.

Well, I've never looked upon myself as being a beauty, per se.

There's an expression in Australia that's called 'Go Bush,' which means to get out of the city and relax. I try and 'go bush' to places where there's no cell reception. But, I don't get to do that often, so for the most part, it's just a state of mind.

My husband keeps me really honest.

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people.

People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date.

The word 'circumnavigate' is quite a beautiful word.

I'm one of those strange beasts who really likes a corset.

You know, when you see yourself on a big screen, I tend to watch from behind my hands. There is absolutely the regret. You always get that at the end of every project. That's what's great about theater: at least every night you get the chance to go out and re-offend. I'm endlessly disappointed, which is what propels me into the next project, probably, not to repair the damage but to kind of hopefully keep developing. Otherwise there's no reason to keep doing it, is there?

An actress once advised me, 'Make sure you do your own laundry - it will keep you honest.'

I like to put perfume on my pulse points, but I also love the way you can sense it - there is an atmosphere that comes from releasing a scent in to the world - it's a primal thing. I spray around me, not just on me, and it lingers in the room after I leave.

I love strange choices. I'm always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory.

I was quite shocked at the tone I took and the judgements I had of the relationship that she embarked on, you know, sex with a minor. But it's the stuff of great drama.

Theater is all about foyers and conversation and digesting what you've seen.

The notion of fate and destiny is a very Greek concept. Working in the theater you do think a lot about that, because as a storyteller you do think, 'At what point was this always going to happen and what part have I got a hand in being able to change things?'

If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

You do get scrutinized in the digital age. You know they're zooming in on every pore, which you've got to forget about.

I've reprised roles in the theatre, which is somehow more accepted, and where one can automatically go deeper and further into the role.

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state.

o matter how much research you do, or invention you do, whether it's a character from a novel, a completely invented character or someone who actually existed, it's a work of faction. By the very fact you only have an hour and a half or two hours to tell a story, you're telescoping events and it is, in the end, a work of imagination.

If you age with somebody, you go through so many roles - you're lovers, friends, enemies, colleagues, strangers; you're brother and sister. That's what intimacy is, if you're with your soulmate.

I don't understand a way to work other than bold-facedly running towards failure.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

When I see daughters with their fathers I wonder what that would be like, although not in a way that immobilises me.

It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

I'm always without sleep. I've got two kids. I understand sleep deprivation on a profound level.