Cate Blanchett Quotes

I'm of the opinion that it's okay to be silent, to not speak if you don't have anything to say.

My everyday beauty routine is always rushed and pretty simple.

It's interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It's hard to say no.

I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth.

I think we should stop drinking bottled water. There's no need to be drinking it if you're living in western communities. The other thing I would suggest - and I feel it particularly here in Australia, because we have very severe drought - is to be aware of how much you're actually consuming. Right now, it's very rainy, but that doesn't mean we can drink all the water we want. Conserving and constantly thinking, "how much do I really need?" should definitely be part of our vocabulary.

I much prefer a natural approach to beauty. You know, Coco Chanel always said to take one thing off before you leave the house, and I think that also applies to makeup.

I'm scared of actors with a scheme.

It's part of my job. You can't play Veronica Guerin sounding like this. It just wouldn't wash. But what I find fascinating about doing an accent - unless it's a farce - is that it's not slapped on.

I'm old enough to remember the days when you spoke to one person from one outlet and that was the conversation. But now what happens is you speak to people and what you say gets translated into Portuguese, then into Mandarin, through a German prism and then back into English and bears little to no resemblance between - to the exchange or - that you had initially with the journalist or to what you originally said.

Being on stage a lot is quite physical.

You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine.

Perhaps being a parent has changed career more in that you ask yourself how long you'll be away from home. My eldest child is approaching school age so that becomes more important. They're less portable.

Any industry loses its innovation and loses its access to creative juices if you don't have progressive thinking and diversity.

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'

I don't consciously think of how parenthood has changed me but I'm sure it must have.

I'm not particularly interested in playing characters that think the way I do.

Women have been doing very, very strange things for centuries. I mean ancient Egyptians were already doing that, but I don't necessarily judge people who do. I don't really think it makes people look better; they just look different.

You will not leave the theater with nothing to talk about. For me, comedy and tragedy when you get them both in one evening, that's the most satisfying.

And perhaps, those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center are niche experience, they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

You don't fully understand the meaning of a work until the audience responds to it. Because the audience completes the circle, and adds a whole other shade of meaning. Whenever you view something, and this is why great works of art survive decades and centuries, is because there's a door within the work that allows the audience to walk through and complete the meaning of the work. An audience isn't passive, nor are they unintelligent.

I often have a few scents depending on if I'm playing a character. The character may be wearing a scent that perhaps I wouldn't wear. We've all got different moods and ways we want to express ourselves; scent is a very powerful way to let people in to your secret life.

See the opportunity in the misstep.

Maybe this is my morality coming in again but it was important to me that the actor [ in Notes On A Scandal] was above the age of consent. Although really, what's the difference between 15 and 16? It's the law, yeah, but he's very mature.

I couldn't possibly have played someone with feelings towards a woman unless I had those feelings myself.

I think Pilates is great, especially when you can do it with a trainer who keeps you on track.

Art civilizes us and it connects us and activates us. And so it's really important to connect with compassion, with stories about people who are different from us.

I'm so misunderstood!

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made.

I'm not interested in saying what people should and shouldn't do. It depends on how people feel about themselves. I suppose personally if you do anything out of fear or to mask who you are, then that's a bit scary. You've got to work with what you got.

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that.

There's a lot of anti-Semitism, and it's not just against the Jewish.

I'm not interested in playing characters who see the world through my prism. I think the journey of understanding any character is to see how they tick and how they differ from you.

Don't you find that work, if you love it, is actually really invigorating?

The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different

It's not the normal way to look at things but I experienced death at a really young age and because of that it's been part of my mental landscape that death is really very possible.

I remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.

The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?'

I think that's what I love about my life. There's no maniacal master plan. It's just unfolding before me.

To record something on your iPhone to be watched later, that's like the opposite of theater. The joy of being there is experiencing it with other people. It doesn't translate onto your phone. It's about being present.

All cities do face similar, significant trends in the future... most importantly global warming and climate change.

What I find interesting is this ricochet effect, that the audience perceives the work and then does something with it, throws it back to the world, and there's an ongoing interaction between work and audience, which doesn't belong to the artist anymore - from the moment you release it, it doesn't belong to anybody.

My dreams tend to be like dog dreams. I'm usually so tired that I hardly dream at all. In a way, I do think that the zone one performs in - without getting too ooga-booga about it - it's like that moment when you wake up in the morning and you're emerging from a dream state but you're not quite up. Where are you? Can you hear the birds? Or is that the traffic? It's that zone in which I perform. It’s like one foot in reality and one foot in a dream state. I spend most of my life in that state!

When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

Every director works differently.

I'm not sitting on a soapbox telling women what they should and shouldn't do, but I know what works for me.

It's important to travel and move and have a continual set of experiences so you've got more to feed back into your work. For me, it's a natural thing.

I do tend to move on anyway. This is a part of my life, but it doesn't rule my life.

The less one can think about oneself, the more interesting and attractive one becomes.