Blanchett keen to play more screen villains
PLAYING a Nazi collaborator in Steven Soderbergh’s post-war noir thriller The Good German has whetted Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett’s appetite for more villainous roles.
%26quot;I got my taste of playing a bit of a baddie in The Good German,%26quot; she said. %26quot;Now I’d like to play an out and out villain.%26quot;
Ms Blanchett, 37, plays the tragic character Lena Brandt opposite George Clooney and Tobey Maguire in Soderbergh’s black-and-white film of betrayal in bombed-out 1945 Berlin.
Her character helps the Nazis during the war to avoid deportation, then is forced into prostitution to survive once the fighting ends and the victorious Russians and Americans take control of the German capital.
%26quot;She’s a noir heroine who by the very definition of that is elusive and unknowable and dangerous and untrustworthy,%26quot; Ms Blanchett said.
%26quot;I think it’s very easy to sit back and say we would never have done that,%26quot; she said, referring to Lena’s collaboration. %26quot;We all hope we would never have done that. It is reprehensible. But you never know what you’re going to do.%26quot;
Ms Blanchett has this year starred in three films released in time for Oscar season - The Good German, Babel with Brad Pitt and Notes on a Scandal with Judi Dench, for which she won an Academy Award nomination.
She is up against four relative unknowns for best supporting actress, including two of her Babel co-stars as well as 10-year-old Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine and favoured newcomer Jennifer Hudson of Dreamgirls.
%26quot;One could say that if you already have an Academy Award it’s a bit greedy to expect any more,%26quot; said Blanchett, who won an Oscar two years ago for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.
After working flat-out for the past decade to emerge as one of Hollywood’s most respected and versatile actresses, Blanchett, a mother of two, plans to take it down a notch.
She will return home to Australia to oversee The Sydney Theatre Company next year with her husband, playwright Andrew Upton.
While in that role, she has said she will spend only three months per year making films.
%26quot;I’ll probably be hopefully still working in the film industry but we’ll obviously be doing a lot of theatre,%26quot; she said. %26quot;So that is going to be an enormous development.%26quot;
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