SHE’S Cate08 and she’s everywhere: walking the red carpet at the
Academy Awards, directing plays, running Australia’s biggest
theatre company, in the women’s glossies because she’s pregnant,
and now serving as the sole woman on Kevin Rudd’s 2020 summit
“steering committee”. For those of us juggling just the one job
with family life, and hardly ever receiving calls from Kevin Rudd
or Steven Spielberg, Blanchett’s energy is amazing. Megan Gale
might be the new Wonder Woman in Hollywood, but Blanchett is the
real thing.
Despite some annoyance at gender imbalance %26#151; the executive
director of Women on Boards, Claire Braund, said having nine men on
the 10-member board “smacks of 11th century paternalism, not 21st
century engagement” %26#151; no one so far is publicly questioning
Blanchett’s appointment. Rather, it has served to reinforce her
reputation as a can-do polymath with a name that causes doors to
swing open.
Versatile? Hosting the Academy Awards last week, Jon Stewart
riffed on Blanchett’s acting range. “She played Queen Elizabeth,
she played Bob Dylan, and a lot of people don’t know this, but that
scene from No Country For Old Men when Javier Bardem is
being chased by a pit bull that, too, was Cate
Blanchett.”
What the audience didn’t know was that Blanchett’s consolation
for dipping out on an Oscar was a seat at Rudd’s top table, leading
a session, with Arts Minister Peter Garrett, on the topic “Towards
a creative Australia”. She will be performing that task around the
time her third child is due.
Add to this her role as the director of the Sydney Theatre
Company’s The Year of Magical Thinking (starring the woman
she succeeds, Robyn Nevin, and which begins next month) and her
role that began in January as joint artistic director (with her
playwright/director husband Andrew Upton) of the STC. And don’t
forget her “ambassadorship” for a luxury skin-care line. Chasing a
psychopath with a bad Beatle haircut would be the least of her
problems.
Is there nothing Cate Blanchett cannot do, and do well? Seems
not. And in a nation where no tall poppy goes uncut, it’s unusual
that it’s hard to find anyone willing to wield the scythe.
“I don’t know of too many people anywhere in the world in any
kind of cultural industry that would do it with such acumen,” says
outgoing Australian Film Institute chief executive James Hewison of
her role at the Rudd talkfest.
“She enjoys considerable renown She’s got both an
internationalist perspective and, by virtue of her desire to come
and live and work in Australia once again, she’s interested in what
is taking place here culturally. I would suggest she’s an excellent
appointment.”
Ivanhoe-born and Methodist Ladies College-schooled, Blanchett is
known as a no-nonsense, down-to-earth operator, a long way from an
air-kissing “luvvie”. For the past two years Blanchett showed her
loyalty to home when she broke into a busy schedule to attend the
AFI Awards, and last year sat alongside Hewison. “She could have
chosen both to sit elsewhere and have other conversations with
other people, but she was remarkably warm and open as well as
bloody good company,” he remembers.
“She’s been intelligent enough to hold onto who she is and to
the real values that surround her,” says Neil Armfield, artistic
director of Sydney’s Company B theatre company and director of the
Australian film Candy.
Michael Veitch, actor, writer and host of the ABC’s Sunday
Arts program, says Blanchett’s appointment as joint artistic
director at the STC is inspired. “Theatre companies are really
having to reinvent themselves,” he says. “They’ve been in the
doldrums for a long time, they have to compete with so many other
media which are much easier and more accessible and immediate and
which require less concentration spans %26#151; so I think it’s a
clever and brave decision.
“She’s incredibly charming, she has vision, and we are yet to
see a lot of what she’s going to do, but she’s given every
impression that she’s going to really try and make theatre a lot
more interesting but not exclusive.”
It is “fantastic” that Blanchett is involved in Rudd’s summit,
Veitch says. “Her scope hasn’t even been tapped yet. The potential
in the woman is unlimited. She was always not just a star, she has
a very good brain. The fact that she’s been willing to take on
these roles %26#151; you could never imagine, say, Nicole Kidman
doing something like this because they are a completely different
animal.”
There can be a natural suspicion of achievers, especially from
the world of acting, jumping out of their area of expertise. George
Clooney, who campaigns for the beleaguered Darfur region of Sudan,
doesn’t suffer that, and neither, largely, does Leonardo DiCaprio,
who is seen as a well-intentioned green advocate. But there is
sniffiness about Angelina Jolie, a United Nations Goodwill
ambassador, who was the butt of a joke at the Academy Awards about
babies and adopting.
Martin Sheen’s run-ins with police at demonstrations only serves
to draw attention to the causes he either espouses or protests
against, although “Hanoi Jane” Fonda will tell you how volatile it
can be mixing show business with politics.
It is brave or foolhardy to question Blanchett’s ability to
multi-task. Last year she copped a rare bit of prejudice when STC
actor Colin Moody quit the company over Blanchett’s appointment,
saying “an Oscar for acting is not a suitable recommendation to run
the biggest theatre company in the country”. He declined to say
what was.
The AFI’s James Hewison says the “sniping around her bona fides
or otherwise” on her STC appointment was “pretty extraordinary”.
“That (criticism) seemed to be rather contained within certain
postcodes of that city.” In the arts, he says, “rivalries,
jealousies abound, as with everywhere, to be frank I put it down to
that, but it did leave a kind of sour taste in my mouth. It seemed
to be a product of petty small-mindedness, I have to say.”
“No one would have anything to gain from launching in,” says
Neil Armfield of any tall poppy tendencies. “She’s extremely
generous herself and I think people respond to that kindness. There
was more than one comment about the appropriateness of Cate and
Andrew running the Sydney Theatre Company, but she’s someone who
people have a great loyalty to.”
“I’ve seen the respect that she’s gained already from within the
Sydney community,” says veteran Melbourne arts administrator Sue
Nattrass. Nattrass says Blanchett is “obviously highly intelligent
%26#151; you can tell from her acting ability, the way she attacks
roles”, and her star power was earned, not conferred by the
media.
She noted Blanchett’s energy, and subscribes to the idea that if
you want something done, give it to a busy person.
“She’s young, she’s vital, she’s bright. I cover a broad range
of things in what I do, and I find that each one informs the other
and it’s a help rather than a hinderance,” Nattrass says.
Some see Blanchett as a natural fit in the new Rudd era of idea
encouragement.
“Cate is a hybrid of artist, administrator and intellectual,”
says Michael Veitch.
“I think she’s emblematic of the cultural thaw that we’re seeing
taking place since the change of government. She’s thinking outside
the ever-decreasing concentric cultural circles that a lot of
people in the arts in a small country like ours are bound by. She’s
thinking globally.”
“Cate is a great person and a great thinker and obviously
carries huge cachet because she’s a star,” says Neil Armfield.
“That’s probably worth a lot to the Government, but she wouldn’t
be there if she wasn’t good as well.”
It’s only early, but 2008 has started out as The Year of the
Cate.
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